OpenAI gets access to AP news stories

In a joint statement, both OpenAI and AP confirmed that the agreement entails OpenAI licensing a portion of AP’s text archive, while AP will benefit from OpenAI’s advanced technology and product expertise.

OpenAI will have access to AP news stories going back to 1985.

Technology companies like OpenAI rely on vast collections of written materials, including books, news articles, and social media content, to enhance their large language models, such as ChatGPT. 

The introduction of ChatGPT in 2022 has spurred the development of “generative AI” products capable of generating new text, images, and other media.

Although the AP presently does not utilise generative AI in its news articles, the organisation has been employing various other types of AI technology for almost 10 years. These applications have included automating corporate earnings reports and providing recaps of sporting events.

Also, the AP has established a programme to assist local news organisations in integrating AI into their operations and has recently introduced an AI-powered image archive search feature.

However, the rise of these tools has raised concerns regarding their potential to generate misleading information that can be challenging to detect due to the models’ strong grasp of human language grammar. 

Furthermore, questions have arisen regarding the appropriate compensation for news organisations and other creators whose work was used to train these artificial intelligence (AI) models, encompassing written content, artwork, music, and other forms of creative output.

On July 13, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into OpenAI and whether it violated consumer protection laws by scraping public data and publishing false information through its chatbot, according to reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times. The FTC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Also Read: Elon Musk announces new company xAI, set to build ChatGPT alternative

Amidst ongoing debates surrounding the use of AI systems, book authors are now demanding compensation for their literary works utilised in training these technologies. 

A collective of over 4,000 prominent writers, including Nora Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, and Jodi Picoult, joined forces by signing a letter addressed to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers. 

The authors accused these companies of engaging in exploitative practices by creating chatbots that imitate and replicate their language, style and ideas without proper compensation. Notably, several novelists and comedian Sarah Silverman have even taken legal action against OpenAI, filing copyright infringement lawsuits.

The two companies said they are also examining “potential use cases for generative AI in news products and services,” though didn’t give specifics. OpenAI and AP both “believe in the responsible creation and use of these AI systems,” the statement said.

The AP deal is valuable to a company like OpenAI because it provides a trove of material that it can use for training purposes and is also a hedge against losing access to material because of lawsuits that have threatened its access to material, said Nick Diakopoulos, a professor of communications studies and computer science at Northwestern University.

“In order to guard against how the courts may decide, maybe you want to go out and sign licensing deals so you’re guaranteed legal access to the material you’ll need,” Diakopoulos said.

The deal’s effects could reach far beyond the AP because of the organisation’s size and its deep ties to other news outlets, said news industry analyst Ken Doctor.

(With AP inputs)

Updated: 14 Jul 2023, 06:36 AM IST