The internet was set alight when news broke of a revolutionary tool that would write you a sonnet, screenplay, or dissertation with a few prompts. ChatGPT adoption spread like wildfire, but it wasn’t long before the ramifications, at least to the tech-savvy, from a compliance perspective became clear.
Since then, after the launch of numerous GenAI tools, a handful of high-profile court cases, and perhaps the most competitive tech races in history, the debate around third-party data use has exploded. Now, OpenAI has signed a seminal deal with publishing giant Condé Nast that could set a precedent for the industry.
Access Allowed
The deal permits OpenAI to display content from well-known Condé Nast publications such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Wired, in ChatGPT, SearchGPT, and other products. OpenAI revealed the details of the partnership in a recent blog post, in which Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, explains how OpenAI is “committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity, and respect for quality reporting.”
It seems the focus of the new partnership is on OpenAI’s SearchGPT prototype. The company is currently testing the features of SearchGPT to provide intuitive results driven by GenAI. For Condé Nast, this means direct links from user searches, while OpenAI is benefiting from a collaborative approach to fine-tuning the design and performance of the tool.
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An Important, If Not Unique, Step
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has partnered with a news outlet. Back in June, the company announced that it had been given access to articles from the entirety of Time’s archive to enhance the output of its GenAI products. Beyond this, the company also signed deals with NewsCorp and Reddit, again with a focus on model training and enhancement.
Where this new partnership stands out is its focus on search. In many ways, this is a more simple transaction: OpenAI provides the navigation, and Condé Nast provides the content. While training data from Time, NewsCorp, and Reddit is about volume, the Condé Nast deal focuses on consumers, with the majority of titles flagged by OpenAI focused on the entertainment, rather than the news or fact-based content available elsewhere.
Closing Thoughts
When the internet was a fledgling technology, publishers had little to no idea of how the medium would take off. As a result, it became difficult for news organizations to benefit financially from digital publications. Famously, the UK newspaper The Telegraph, one of the first to migrate online, chose to publish all of its content for free, igniting a debate around paywalls that went on for decades.
While publishers have, momentarily at least, stopped scratching their heads while trying to figure out how best to monetize online content, the arrival of ChatGPT has posed a new challenge. That’s why the Condé Nast/OpenAI deal is so important.
The deal sets a precedent for how best to manage access to online content through GenAI tools while still retaining ownership and ensuring financial gains. Right now, Condé Nast isn’t in a position where the majority of its content is being consumed through GenAI tools or services, but this could change. Let’s not forget that since the early 1990s, internet adoption has grown from 0 to upwards of 5 billion users.
