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New York Times licenses content to Amazon for AI training
For the first time, The New York Times has licensed its content to Amazon, allowing use in Alexa devices and AI training - even as it sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
The move comes as Amazon accelerates efforts to strengthen its AI portfolio, including upgrades to its Alexa Plus assistant and continued investment in Claude, an AI developed by startup Anthropic. (Image credits: Unsplash)
The New York Times (NYT) has inked a content licensing deal with Amazon, marking the first time the storied publication has granted permission for its editorial material to be used in training artificial intelligence models, according to media reports.
The agreement, whose financial details remain undisclosed, allows Amazon to use summaries, excerpts, and even cooking recipes from the NYT across its suite of AI products, including Alexa smart speakers and in-house AI models.
The move comes as Amazon accelerates efforts to strengthen its AI portfolio, including upgrades to its Alexa Plus assistant and continued investment in Claude, an AI developed by startup Anthropic.
In an internal memo shared Thursday, NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien emphasized that the deal reflects the publication's firm stance on the value of journalism in the AI era. She also added that the deal is consistent with their long-held principle that high-quality journalism is worth paying for, the report added.
The licensing move arrives even as The New York Times remains embroiled in a high-profile legal battle with OpenAI and Microsoft, which it sued in 2023 for alleged copyright violations.
The Times claims that millions of its articles were used without permission to train generative AI models like ChatGPT, and is seeking billions in damages. OpenAI has dismissed the lawsuit as “without merit,” asserting that the Times is not “telling the full story.”
Also Read: ChatGPT data stored outside India, copyright act does not apply in ANI case: OpenAI to Delhi HC
The broader media landscape is grappling with the growing influence of generative AI models, which are trained on vast corpuses of text, often scraped from the web. Media companies worry that such practices amount to unauthorized use of their intellectual property.
In recent months, several publishers - including News Corp, Axel Springer, and the Financial Times, have opted for licensing arrangements with OpenAI, though many executives see these deals as interim solutions pending clearer legal frameworks.
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