Amazon has agreed to pay The New York Times Co. a minimum of $20 million to utilize its journalism in developing the tech giant’s artificial intelligence capabilities. The deal was initially announced in May.
The agreement allows Amazon to leverage editorial content from The New York Times’ daily journalism, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic for various AI-related applications. These include generating real-time summaries and excerpts of Times articles within Amazon products such as Alexa, as well as training Amazon’s foundation models, as stated in a joint statement released earlier this summer. The New York Times Co. will benefit significantly from this deal, as the $20 million payment represents approximately 1 percent of its operating budget for 2024.
For Amazon, with a market cap exceeding $2 trillion, the $20 million payment is relatively small. This licensing agreement comes at a time when The New York Times is involved in ongoing litigation with Microsoft and OpenAI. The litigation concerns alleged copyright infringement related to the use of NYT content in ChatGPT, a popular AI chatbot. A judge ruled earlier this year that The Times’ case against OpenAI can proceed, highlighting the complexities and legal challenges surrounding the use of copyrighted material in AI development.
It’s worth noting that Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, adding an interesting dynamic to the deal between Amazon and The New York Times. The agreement demonstrates the growing importance of high-quality journalism in the development of AI technologies and the significant financial transactions involved in licensing such content.
