AP Strikes Deal With OpenAI For News Sharing And Tech Expertise

 The Associated Press said Thursday it reached a two-year deal with artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI to share access to its news archive in return for technology and product expertise. 

The AP’s deal is one of the first between a major news agency and AI as the technology becomes more popular in businesses and corporations worldwide, Axios reported. As part of the deal, OpenAI will gain access to some of the AP’s text archives dating back to 1985, and the AP will receive expertise from the AI algorithm. A spokesperson told Axios that the two entities are still working through the details of the deal. 

The AP is hoping the deal will put it in a position to lead in developing standards for newsrooms using generative AI, which refers to a system that generates its own text or other media in response to prompts. 

“AP firmly supports a framework that will ensure intellectual property is protected and content creators are fairly compensated for their work,” said AP Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Kristin Heitmann. “News organizations must have a seat at the table to ensure this happens, so that newsrooms large and small can leverage this technology to benefit journalism.” 

OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap said the AP’s “feedback—along with access to their high-quality, factual text archive—will help to improve the capabilities and usefulness of OpenAI’s systems.” 

OpenAI released its latest model, GPT-4, in March. During the new model’s release, the company showcased the software’s powerful problem-solving and image recognition, describing images, creating a working website, and even doing simulated taxes. The company says that GPT-4 “while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

The AP has used automated technology in its reporting for almost ten years, starting with automating corporate earnings reports before using the tech to report on college sports and even minor league baseball. The news agency is hoping the deal with OpenAI will help it understand how to potentially use generative AI in its news coverage.