NYT reaches AI licensing deal with Amazon
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
The New York Times headquarters in New York City. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The New York Times has inked a multiyear AI licensing deal with Amazon to bring its journalism to a number of Amazon-owned products and experiences, the company said Thursday.
Why it matters: It's the Times' first-ever deal with an AI company for its content.
- The newspaper company is currently engaged in a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
Zoom in: The licensing deal will give Amazon access to editorial content from the New York Times, its cooking app, and its sports site, The Athletic, for AI-related uses, the company said.
- The content will be used to fuel real-time answers to user queries via summaries and short excerpts of Times content that appear across Amazon products and services, such as the Alexa voice assistant.
- The deal also gives Amazon access to the Times' content for training its large language models.
Between the lines: When asked why the deal doesn't include content from the Times' consumer recommendation site, Wirecutter, a spokesperson told Axios that "Amazon and Wirecutter have a longstanding relationship."
The big picture: More news companies are finding ways to strike deals with some AI firms while taking legal action against others.
- News Corp. struck a lucrative five-year deal with OpenAI last year but later sued AI search engine Perplexity.
- The Atlantic, Condé Nast and Politico (through its parent Axel Springer) have all announced commercial deals with OpenAI, but are suing Cohere.
Disclosure: Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios' story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into four local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include the above disclosure.
