The New York Times has struck a multi-year AI licensing deal with Amazon that will bring its “editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,” the outlet announced on Thursday. Under the agreement, Amazon will include summaries and short excerpts of The Times’ content in products like Alexa, and will also use the Times articles to help train its AI models, The Verge reported.
The deal comes over a year after the The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement, accusing the companies of “copying and using millions” of its articles to train their AI models, while depriving the publication of subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue.
Several other outlets have sued OpenAI on similar grounds, including The Intercept, Raw Story, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the owner of IGN and CNET. Other publishers, like The Atlantic News Corp, and The Verge parent company Vox Media have struck AI licensing deals.
Engadget reported: The New York Times and Amazon have entered into a multi-year licensing agreement that will allow Amazon access to much of the publication’s editorial content for AI-related users.
In a press release announcing the deal, The New York Times shared that this agreement will bring new features for customers like accessing summaries or excerpts of Times content using Alexa. It will also allow Amazon to train its AI models on The New York Times content.
In announcing the deal, The New York Times shared, “The collaboration will make The New York Times’ original content more accessible to customers across Amazon products and services including direct links to Times products and underscores the companies’ shared commitment to serving customers with global news and perspectives within Amazon’s AI products.”
AI models require training on vast amounts of data, and many of the companies building them are likely running afoul of copyright laws by training on protected materials. OpenAI and Google went so far as to ask for their models to train freely. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for training on their models on the company’s content without permission back in 2023, though the case is still ongoing.
Fortune reported: The daily drumbeat of AI hype cycles and tech breakthroughs often feel like riding big waves. But questions about the copyrighted data used to train generative AI models without owner consent have simmered for years — since before ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022.
Much of the legal wrangling have focused on the legal doctrine of “fair use”- that is you can use someone else’s copyrighted work without permission — as long as the use is limited, transformative, and doesn’t hurt the creator’s market.
One example is the ongoing case against Meta and OpenAI by comedian Sarah Silverman and two other authors, who filed copyright infringement lawsuits in 2023 alleging that pirated versions of the works were used without permission to train AI language models.
The defendants recently argued that the use falls under fair use doctrine because the AI systems “study” works to “learn”, and create new, transformative content.