The New York Times’ Big AI Move: First Licensing Deal Lands With Amazon
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The New York Times has made a multi-year AI licensing deal with the e-commerce giant Amazon, which will bring its “editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences.” As part of the deal, Amazon will offer summaries and short excerpts of the content from the New York Times in various products like Alexa.
Deal allows Amazon to train AI models with The New York Times content
As part of the AI licensing deal, The New York Times is allowing Amazon to utilize its editorial content for products such as Alexa. It is the paper’s first licensing deal tied to generative artificial intelligence. Amazon can now use articles from The Times and content from NYT Cooking and the sports-centric website The Athletic. Furthermore, Amazon announced that it will use the licensed content to train its proprietary AI models.
Neither The New York Times nor Amazon has disclosed the financial terms of the deal. However, Meredith Kopit Levien, The Times’ chief executive, emphasized that the deal aligns with the paper’s long-standing principle of ensuring that high-quality journalism receives proper compensation. NYT’s deal with Amazon will create a valuable opportunity to market the paper to people who do not yet subscribe, Emarketer analyst Max Willens said.
In the official announcement, NYT said, “The collaboration will make The New York Times’s original content more accessible to customers across Amazon products and services, including direct links to Times products, and underscores the companies’ shared commitment to serving customers with global news and perspectives within Amazon’s AI products.”
Deal comes over a year after The Times sued AI companies like OpenAI
It’s worth mentioning that the AI licensing deal between The New York Times and Amazon arrived over a year after The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement. The publication accused the firms of “copying and using millions” of its articles to train their AI models. The paper said the companies deprived it of subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue.
So the deal stands out, considering it is the first generative AI licensing deal the Times has made so far. Other major media companies have made similar deals to license their content for AI models in recent years. Some of the notable houses include News Corp., The Associated Press, and Axel Springer, the German publisher.
