The Guardian has become the latest news publisher to sign a deal with ChatGPT owner OpenAI over content licensing.
The deal will ensure The Guardian receives compensation for the use of its journalism on ChatGPT and gets properly credited on the platform. Under the deal The Guardian will also be able to use OpenAI technology in-house.
The publisher said: “Guardian Media Group today announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence and deployment, that will bring the Guardian’s high quality journalism to ChatGPT’s global users.
“Under the partnership, Guardian reporting and archive journalism will be available as a news source within ChatGPT, alongside the publication of attributed short summaries and article extracts.
“In addition, the Guardian will also roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to develop new products, features and tools.”
The announcement comes a year after The Guardian published its approach to AI which said: “A guiding principle for the tools and models we consider using will be the degree to which they have considered key issues such as permissioning, transparency and fair reward.”
Guardian 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.”
OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said: “Our partnership with Guardian Media Group furthers our goal of supporting world-class journalism and enriches the ChatGPT experience by providing access to relevant, real-time news content. It’s part of our overall strategy to help publishers and audiences benefit from advanced AI technology.”
The move comes after joined a legal action filed on 13 February against Canadian AI start-up Cohere Inc which is accused of “engaged in widespread unauthorised use of publisher content in developing and running its generative AI systems”.
ChatGPT already uses Guardian journalism in its results and does not always include links.
For instance, asking ChatGPT the following question: “Summarise today’s news from the Guardian” results in a 260-word bullet-point summary of key stories with no link back to the title.
A prompt asking: “What is the copyright row involving James Bond and a Dubai property developer?” results in a 140-word summary of The Guardian’s exclusive news report with a small Guardian link at the bottom.
The Guardian joins the likes of the FT, Axel Springer, Hearst and News Corp who have also signed content licensing deals with OpenAI.
Other publisher AI deals include Reuters (with Meta) and DMG Media (with Prorata.ai).
Mumsnet, The Intercept and The New York Times are among the publishers suing OpenAI after it used their content without permission to train its large language model.
Press Gazette has compiled a comprehensive summary of publisher AI deals and litigation.
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