In brief
The New York Times has signed a multi-year deal with Amazon, licensing its news, cooking, and sports content for use in Alexa and Amazon’s AI training models.
The agreement marks the newspaper’s first AI-focused licensing deal, even as it continues to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using its content without permission.
Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal comes as Amazon expands Alexa+ and ramps up its AI efforts.
The New York Times has signed its first-ever content licensing deal focused on generative artificial intelligence, granting Amazon access to news, recipes, and sports reporting for use across its AI platforms, including Alexa and its proprietary machine learning models.
Announced Thursday, the multi-year agreement includes material from the title’s flagship news operation, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic.
The deal allows for real-time display of summaries and excerpts on Amazon devices and services, and permits Amazon to use the content to help train its foundation models.
“It aligns with our deliberate approach to ensuring that our work is valued appropriately, whether through commercial deals or through the enforcement of our intellectual property rights,” Meredith Kopit Levien, chief executive of the New York Times, said in a note to the staff.
The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and neither company has publicly shared details on the scope or duration of content usage.
The deal marks a significant moment for the media industry as publishers including the Times themselves respond to the rise of generative AI.
The New York Times and AI
In December 2023, the New York Times filed a copyright lawsuit against tech giants OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of using millions of Times articles without permission to train their AI models.
“OpenAI and Microsoft have built a business valued into the tens of billions of dollars by taking the combined works of humanity without permission” The New York Times said in the lawsuit.
In April, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, denying OpenAI and Microsoft’s motions to dismiss key claims, including those related to direct and contributory copyright infringement.
Amazon’s AI race
For Amazon, the agreement with the media platform supports its broader effort to catch up in the AI race.
Earlier his month, the company began rolling out Alexa+, a generative AI-powered version of its assistant, to over 100,000 early users.
The system, powered in part by Anthropic’s Claude AI, is designed to be more conversational and aware, and will soon feature curated Times journalism as part of its offering.
Decrypt has reached out to both Amazon and The New York Times with requests for comment.
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