Media conglomerate News Corporation has signed a deal to allow the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence firm OpenAI to access content from some of its major news publications.

New Corp Signs Deal With OpenAI

News Corp publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post were the first to report on the deal, which the outlets reportedly valued at $250 million over five years despite not publicly disclosing the financial terms.

The Journal added that the partnership guaranteed that the content would not be available on ChatGPT immediately after it was published on one of the news websites.

The Hill further reported that the agreement came when other news organizations filed lawsuits alleging the tech firm violated copyright law by using their articles to train on the program.

VCPost also reported on the recent issues OpenAI has been involved with, such as the departure of co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and "Superalignment" AI safety team head Jan Leike, as well as Scarlett Johansson's accusation that the tech startup was using her voice without her permission.

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AI and Journalism

According to its press release published Wednesday (May 22), News Corp said that the deal would permit the creators of ChatGPT to display articles from its major news sites on the generative AI platform, allowing people "the ability to make informed choices" based on the information provided by the news sites.

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said that his OpenAI counterpart Sam Altman and his team understood what he called the "commercial and social significance of journalists and journalism."

On the other hand, Altman looked forward to the News Corp-OpenAI partnership, saying that it was a "proud moment" in journalism and technology.  

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the partnership was crucial for training AI models and could attract news publishers in the future despite the industry being denied a portion of the profits that internet giants earn for distributing their content. 

News Corp's shares rose by 4% after the bell on Wednesday.

While the News Corp deal was unprecedented in terms of monetary value, The Hill added that OpenAI signed a deal with the Associated Press last year to license its archive of news stories.

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