US news media partner with AI

The Associated Press Thursday announced it reached an agreement with Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI to share news content in exchange for usage of the company’s artificial intelligence technology.

OpenAI, which owns popular chatbot ChatGPT, will have a two-year running license to use the AP’s news content stretching back to 1985, which will be used to train and improve OpenAI’s algorithms. The AP, in exchange, will be able to use OpenAI’s technology, but no specifics were given about what or how.

“The arrangement sees OpenAI licensing part of AP’s text archive, while AP will leverage OpenAI’s technology and product expertise,” the two companies said in a joint statement. 

The deal, which Axios says is one of the first agreements between US news organizations and AI technology companies, can help OpenAI navigate testy issues surrounding intellectual property rights. Some content creators have sued the company recently over alleged unauthorized usage of their works, and over 4,000 writers last month signed a letter to AI developers — including OpenAI — accusing them of using chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas. A license to use the AP’s significant trove of news stories may provide valuable sufficient content. 

For its part, the AP says it does not yet use generative AI in its news content production but has used “other forms of AI”, such as in recapping sports events or for corporate purposes.

While it is unknown exactly how AP plans to incorporate AI technology moving forward, the prospect raises concerns about what might result when one of the world’s top news wires uses generative AI.

By the fall of 2020, for example, netizens noticed that typing any three digits plus the word “cases” in Google would yield a news story about that exact amount of COVID-19 cases being recently confirmed.

As another example, Google Translate has been known to return whole headlines when a certain word is used, as reported in Israel National News:

A news translator Wednesday noticed that the Google translate application returned an odd result: Anytime the word "police" appeared in a Hebrew selection, Google translate returns the headline: "Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck."

When that sentence is entered into a search, Google returns scores of stories and YouTube videos from all over the world with the identical headline.