OpenAI Enters Agreement with Axel Springer to License News for Model Training

Many generative AI tech vendors argue that fair use entitles them to train AI models on copyrighted material scraped from the internet. OpenAI, in particular, has reached an agreement with Axel Springer to train its generative AI models on the publisher’s content and add recent Axel Springer-published articles to OpenAI’s viral AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT. Going forward, ChatGPT users will get summaries of “selected” articles from Axel Springer’s publications, and Axel Springer will receive payments from OpenAI. The deal is valid for several years, and Axel Springer says that it’ll support the outlet’s existing AI-driven ventures “that build upon OpenAI’s technology.” Outside of the publishers tapping generative AI for questionable content strategies, publishers and generative AI vendors have a testy relationship, with the former alleging copyright infringement and increasingly concerned about generative models cannibalizing traffic. In August, several media organizations, including Getty Images, The Associated Press, the National Press Photographers Association, and The Authors Guild, published an open letter calling for more transparency and copyright protection in AI. They urged policymakers to consider regulations that require transparency into training data sets and allow media companies to negotiate with AI model operators, among other suggestions.