(Image: Zennie/Private Media) News Corp and other media companies have recently announced major partnerships with OpenAI, granting the American artificial intelligence research company access to the content of its global mastheads to “share journalistic expertise” . Google also has an arrangement and Meta is reportedly looking to do the same with other publishers. First, let me be clear.
I celebrate AI companies paying original content holders for training data and outputs. It’s what should have been done in the first place; instead we had AI products like ChatGPT hoovering up vast amounts of content from news websites, forums, videos and book manuscripts without permission. Without original and accurate content, AI model outputs are prone to errors and fabrications.
But the question must be asked of these deals: to what end and for how long? AI-generated news is unhuman slop. Crikey is banning it Read More Expiry on the horizon AI deals are different from distribution or syndication deals, which are about finding mutually beneficial ways of distributing content and finding new channels as a source of new audiences. AI companies only need original content makers until their own AI products learn to become good or accurate enough content makers themselves, particularly if part of these deals is about training them on “journalistic principles”.
Once this line has been crossed, tech companies may feel they no longer need those original creators. Outputs in AI programs .
