AI News Monitor

Experts have warned that AI licensing deals are necessary to protect intellectual property amid industry disruption.

AI licensing deals are gathering pace as the Guardian Media Group becomes the latest media house to sign a deal with an AI tech company. This comes amid growing concerns over AI’s impact on the news industry.

In a landmark announcement made on Friday, the Guardian revealed that it was entering a strategic partnership with OpenAI. The collaboration will make Guardian reports and archived content available as a trusted source within ChatGPT, while the news publisher gets attribution for its journalism.

The Guardian’s chief financial and operating officer Keith Underwood said, “This new partnership with OpenAI reflects the intellectual property rights and value associated with our award-winning journalism, expanding our reach and impact to new audiences and innovative platform services.”

It is unclear if there is compensation for the content involved in the deal.

Analysts have previously stressed the need to maintain integrity and ensure fair compensation for journalists whose work is being accessed and used by AI models. Indeed, The New York Times is suing both OpenAI and Microsoft for using its content without license. It is also joined by The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

However, other publishers, including the Associated Press, News Corp., Vox Media, and the Atlantic, have reached deals with OpenAI licensing their content for ChatGPT. The financial terms of the agreements are not known.

Steve Hasker, CEO of Thomson Reuters, has previously said that licensing deals are necessary to protect intellectual property. Hasker also notes that they could provide a new revenue stream for news organizations to support quality journalism.

Last year, he led his company to seal a licensing deal with Meta so that its news content can be accessed through AI-powered features on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook.

Meanwhile, Reuters also won a copyright case on Tuesday in a federal court in Delaware. The judge ruled that the company’s content cannot be used without authorization to build a competing AI-based platform, as that does not constitute fair use.

Fair use has been adopted as a legal defense by big tech companies to use copyrighted material on the Internet to train their large language models. This ruling in favor of Reuters will therefore be welcomed by news organizations concerned about protecting the value of their online content.

However, media organizations aren’t the only ones involved in talks regarding AI licensing deals. Latest reports show that online forum Reddit has made in the region of $130 million on licensing deals. Google paid $60 million as part of an annual content deal. It is believed that OpenAI paid the remaining $70 million. Reddit is one of the largest social platforms in the world, and as of January, was the sixth most-visited website. Its content is valuable for training AI models because it contains discussions on millions of topics, while also giving AI insight into natural human language, behavior, and preferences.