The New York Times and Amazon ink AI licensing deal

Nearly two years after suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, The New York Times has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon to train the tech giant’s AI platforms. 

The agreement will “bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,” the outlet said in a statement. That includes content like news articles, material from NYT Cooking, a site dedicated to food and recipes, and The Athletic, its sports-focused site. 

The company also noted that Amazon’s use of The Times’s editorial content could extend to Alexa software on its smart speakers. 

“Whenever it makes sense within the consumer experience on Amazon’s products, they will provide direct links to Times products, where readers can get the full Times experience,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a New York Times spokesperson, told TechCrunch.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it’s the first of such agreements for Amazon. OpenAI has signed multiple similar deals with publishers, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NewsCorp, Axel Springer, and more. 

This is also the first time The Times is agreeing to a generative AI-focused licensing arrangement, and it comes after the outlet accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of articles published by The Times to train their AI models without consent or compensation.

“We have a long-standing approach to ensure that our work is valued appropriately, whether through commercial deals or through the enforcement of our intellectual property rights,” the spokesperson said.

Both OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected allegations of wrongdoing. 

This article has been updated with comments from The New York Times.