OpenAI announces new media partnership with magazine giant Condé Nast

The company plans to integrate these features directly into ChatGPT in the future, the statement added.

Terms of the partnership were not announced — a common theme among deals signed between OpenAI and publishers including the Associated Press, The Atlantic and Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider.

The New York Times is among those not making deals with OpenAI. Late last year, the publisher filed a lawsuit against the company for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages,” accusing the AI ​​leader of violating copyright law by “copying and using the uniquely valuable work of The Times.”

When reached for comment by Business Insider, a Condé Nast representative shared an internal memo from CEO Roger Lynch sent to the company’s employees. In it, the media executive acknowledged that AI is “rapidly changing” the way the public discovers and consumes information, which contributed to the need for the agreement.

“Over the past decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies have eroded publishers’ ability to monetize content, most recently with traditional search,” Lynch wrote. “Our partnership with OpenAI begins to offset some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative efforts.”

Lynch, in his note, indicated that OpenAI is “very committed” to working transparently with publishers “so that the public can receive reliable information and news through their platforms.”

Lack of transparency in OpenAI media transactions

But not everyone is convinced, including the writers who create the content that trains the AI.

“The growing burden of AI on journalism is a significant concern for our NewsGuild of New York members,” Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York, which represents unionized Condé Nast workers, said in a statement after news of the Condé deal broke Nast appeared. . NewsGuild representatives directed BI to DeCarava’s statement when reached for comment for this story.

DeCarava continued, “We expect Condé management to be transparent with us about how this technology will be used and the impact it may have on our business. We are looking into further details of Condé’s OpenAI agreement to ensure that our members’ rights are protected.”

In May, NewsGuild journalists reacted similarly to news of an OpenAI partnership with The Atlantic and Vox Media. They indicated that workers were concerned about the lack of transparency about what the agreement entailed and how it would affect their work.

“Management should immediately make the terms of the agreement available to Atlantic staff and then call an all-hands meeting to answer our questions honestly, clearly and unequivocally,” the union said in a statement.

When reached for comment, OpenAI representatives directed BI to a statement from Brad Lightcap, the company’s COO.

“We are committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that as AI plays a bigger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity and respect for quality reporting,” he said. said Lightcap.

Is the AI ​​bubble about to burst?

The news of the OpenAI and Condé Nast partnership comes amid some on Wall Street worrying that the AI ​​bubble may be about to burst. Concern has grown in recent weeks, drawing cautionary reports from Goldman Sachs and venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, though many remain bullish on the industry.

AI investors have spent tens of billions of dollars building data centers and developing the semiconductors needed to run and train large language models. But the resulting product development hasn’t come close to recouping investment, and the path to monetizing AI chatbots, search functions, and coding assistants—many of which remain riddled with bugs, glitches, and hallucinations—remains unclear.

“A lot of the dot-com companies that drove the change in the Internet went bankrupt doing it,” Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, previously told BI. “A lot of AI companies driving such a big shift will go broke or lose half their value.”

Publishers have been particularly hard hit by recent advances in AI technology, with generative AI being perceived as an existential threat to those who create content themselves.

The Associated Press reported that recruiting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimated that 2,681 journalism jobs were lost in 2023, a number that continued to rise this year.

Jeff Jarvis, author of “The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and its Lessons for the Age of Internet,” told the press that the impact of new technologies on the publishing industry is an “inevitability.” its old business models and methods.

“I’m optimistic in the long term. But in the short term, it’s going to be ugly,” Jarvis said.