OpenAI signs agreement with Condé Nast for SearchGPT access to major magazine content

At the centre is the search engine launched in July, billed as the Google-killer, but which for the time being is still in the prototype stage and in restricted access. The Microsoft-backed company led by Sam Altman has signed similar agreements with Time magazine, the Financial Times, Axel Springer, Le Monde, Prisa, and Vox Media in recent months. Thanks to these agreements, access is granted to the large text archives owned by publishers, which are needed both to train large language models such as ChatGPT and to find information in real time. Others have made different choices moving on the legal side, as happened with the New York Times for instance, or even the Chigago Tribune, which pointed the finger at the issue of copyright infringement resulting from the training of generative models.

"We are committed to partnering with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that while artificial intelligence plays a larger role in news discovery and distribution, it maintains accuracy, integrity and respect for quality reporting," said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's chief operating officer, in a blog post reporting the news.

As for Condé Nast, CEO Roger Lynch said in an email to employees that the deal will offset some of the revenue that technology companies have wrested from publishers in recent years: 'Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way audiences discover information. It is critical that we meet audiences where they are able to embrace new technologies, while ensuring proper attribution and compensation for the use of our intellectual property."

Lynch also praised OpenAI for being 'transparent and willing to collaborate productively with publishers like us so that the public can receive reliable information and news through their platforms'. The challenge to Google also goes through this.

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