ChatGPT to summarize Politico, Business Insider in unprecedented deal

OpenAI agrees to compensate Axel Springer for accessing its content, including paywalled stories

On Wednesday, Axel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider and Politico, announced a partnership with OpenAI. OpenAI will compensate the German media group to enable ChatGPT to provide summaries of current articles within the chatbot’s generated responses. The collaboration aims to deliver users worldwide summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer’s media brands, including the German tabloid Bild, according to a joint statement from the two companies.

The chatbot’s responses will incorporate content typically restricted by a paywall, providing “links to the full articles for transparency and further information,” according to the announcement. Axel Springer will receive compensation for granting access to its content for the US artificial intelligence firm, as stated by a spokesperson for the media group to AFP. The agreement is applicable for several years and does not bind either party to exclusivity, allowing them the flexibility to enter into additional agreements, the spokesperson added, providing no further details.

Contrarily, some media entities have chosen to restrict their content from the extensive text consumption and imitation appetite of AI. CNN, the New York Times, Disney (owner of ABC), Bloomberg, and the Guardian have barred ChatGPT’s web crawler from gathering their content for training the chatbot in mimicking human writing. OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits, alleging the use of copyrighted material to train ChatGPT, a claim the company refutes.

Previous iterations of ChatGPT relied on a dataset incorporating information from 2021 and earlier. OpenAI has recently taken measures to enhance the chatbot’s capabilities by incorporating more up-to-date information.

The spokesperson from Axel Springer highlighted that due to the rise of platforms like Google and Facebook, media companies had overlooked the chance to create a new revenue stream, and now everyone is trying to catch up with the financial landscape.

Axel Springer’s CEO, Mathias Döpfner, described the collaboration with OpenAI as “the first of its kind.” He expressed the intention to delve into the possibilities of AI-enhanced journalism, aiming to elevate the quality, societal significance, and the business model of journalism to new heights.

Döpfner had previously cautioned about AI posing a potential threat to “replace” journalism, and his group has actively pursued AI-driven initiatives.

OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer, Brad Lightcap, mentioned in the statement that collaboration with Axel Springer would “aid in offering people new avenues to access high-quality, real-time news content through our AI tools.”

While AI chatbots like ChatGPT can rapidly generate essays, poems, and more, concerns arise regarding the possibility of these bots recycling and disseminating false, nonsensical, or offensive material in response to user queries, a phenomenon known as “AI hallucinations.