Condé Nast inked a deal with OpenAI, the prominent artificial-intelligence tech company, to license content from brands including the New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and Vogue for use within the AI company’s products, including ChatGPT and the SearchGPT prototype.
Condé Nast joins other publishers and news organizations that have inked deals with OpenAI, a list that includes the Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Atlantic, Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, LeMonde, NewsCorp, Prisa Media, Time and Vox Media. In another camp are the New York Times and other newspapers, which have sued OpenAI as well as Microsoft, alleging the tech companies engaged in copyright infringement by using the publishers’ content to train their AI systems.
In a memo to staff Tuesday, Condé Nast chief Roger Lynch said the multiyear pact with OpenAI will “expand the reach of Condé Nast’s content” — as well as make up for digital revenue that has been lost as technology platforms including internet search engines have “eroded publishers’ ability to monetize content.” Under the deal, Condé Nast would not be using OpenAI’s gen-AI tools to create content; rather, articles from its titles would be incorporated into OpenAI products, which would credit the original publication as the source material.
“As we all know, generative AI is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information,” Lynch wrote in the memo. “It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are and embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property. This is exactly what we have found with OpenAI.”
Lynch praised OpenAI as having been “transparent and willing to productively work with publishers like us so that the public can receive reliable information and news through their platforms.”
According to OpenAI, with the introduction of the SearchGPT prototype, “we’re testing new search features that make finding information and reliable content sources faster and more intuitive.” SearchGPT is designed to combine “our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.” The company noted that SearchGPT offers “direct links to news stories” and it plans to “integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future.”
“We’re committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity, and respect for quality reporting,” Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, said in a blog post about the pact.
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