Altman's Almanac

OpenAI is on a digital news feeding frenzy.

The Sam Altman-led company on Tuesday announced it had inked a multi-year agreement with Condé Nast, which will allow the artificial intelligence juggernaut to draw on content from the publisher's portfolio of iconic brands, including The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, WIRED, and more.

It is just the latest in a string of deals OpenAI has struck with publishers over the course of the last year as Altman looks to build a robust library of reliable information to power his forthcoming A.I.-powered Google competitor, SearchGPT. Condé Nast joins the Associated Press, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith, TIME, The Atlantic, News Corporation, Vox Media, and others in agreeing to license their human-created content to the tech behemoth.

Whether these deals ultimately prove to be beneficial for the publishers remains to be seen. The past is rife with examples of technology companies making grand promises to news organizations, only to abruptly change course, leaving publishers scrambling. (Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, we're looking at you.)

On one hand, much of the outrage directed toward OpenAI and other A.I. companies has been over the fact that they've trained their systems on information without asking for permission, or more importantly paying for it. These deals represent the company changing course and offering publishers compensation for the work they have produced. And, given the dire state of the news industry, the lucrative deals can help pay for a lot of good journalism moving forward.

"Over the last decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies eroded publishers’ ability to monetize content, most recently with traditional search," Roger Lynch, they chief executive of Condé Nast, acknowledged in a memo to staff Tuesday. "Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors."

That said, publishers looking at the media landscape are likely realizing they don't have much of a choice but to partner with tech companies like OpenAI — largely because they have created A.I. beasts by having previously gobbled up untold amounts of data at no cost. Through the ingesting of large chunks of the internet without consent over the last several years, OpenAI won an incredible amount of leverage that can be wielded in the negotiating room.

Some publishers, of course, are openly resisting OpenAI. Most notably, The New York Times sued the company late last year for "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages," alleging OpenAI violated copyright law through the "copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works." Instead of striking a licensing deal with the Altman-led company, The Times believes OpenAI already owes it substantial compensation.

The Times, however, is an outlier in the news industry. Most publishers have not followed in its footsteps. Instead, over the last several months, they have opted to acquiesce to the A.I. Goliath, announcing licensing agreements. That is in no small part due to the reality of the dramatically shifting landscape publishers find themselves operating in, which Lynch acknowledged Tuesday.

"As we all know, generative A.I. is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information," Lynch wrote. "It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are and embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property."