After AP News, OpenAI Craves for More News Agencies for Real-Time Data & Avoid Legal Tussle

Within a week of collaborating with Associated Press (AP), one of the biggest news agency in the US, OpenAI is now out with their biggest partnership with any media organisation. Announcing over a $5 million partnership with American Journalism Project (AJP) , and another $5 million through API credits for its grantee organisations, a total of over $10 million will be invested by Sam Altman-led OpenAI. The partnership is said to explore ways to develop AI to support local news and in the process OpenAI will indirectly tie up with 41 news agencies that AJP supports. 

Following the line of collaborating with not-for-profit news agency AP, OpenAI’s collaboration with non-profit media continues. Associated Journalism project is a venture philanthropy that invests in developing nonprofit newsrooms and through the OpenAI partnership, the organisation is looking at ways to enhance local newsrooms with AI technologies. AJP will use the funding to build an AI studio for training their portfolio organisations and leverage AI tools at their discretion. 

Capturing Local Media Market 

Following the ‘big fish in a small pond’ philosophy, OpenAI is slowly building a grasp over media through the smaller players. By collaborating with AJP, it has indirectly partnered with 41 non profit news establishments in the US. Foregoing major news outlets for the time being, OpenAI is growing their data pool through the local market. By gaining access to local news across the country, the company is building a strong foothold in relevancy. 

Through AP collaboration, where OpenAI will gain access to news and information dating back to 1985 to current news, through AJP, the reach is to refine the news information through local players. 

Why the Media Obsession? 

In an earlier interview, when asked a hypothetical question, of what Altman will do if he had to run a large news media in a country like India, he said that he has heard from journalists and reporters that his product has helped them execute their boring parts of their job better allowing them to spend time on reporting and thinking of ideas. Therefore, he would encourage everyone to use it. 

As a prelude to what is happening now, OpenAI is in fact pushing for product adoption across media outlets. But, what is OpenAI gaining from it? In the process, the company is not only addressing the gap of providing real-time data, but also evading future legal troubles.

The partnership comes at a time when the regulatory authorities are introspecting OpenAI’s actions. In spite of being a crusader of AI safety at senate hearings and formulating plans for democratising AI, OpenAI has not been able to evade the regulatory bodies. The FTC (federal trade commission) recently opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI’s activities over risks of leaking personal data. OpenAI was sent a document detailing concerns over the company’s products including information of third-parties using its API. 

OpenAI’s partnership with news agencies also safeguards training content. With publishers and microblogging platforms such as Twitter, Reddit and Stack Overflow restricting content from being scraped, training of AI models will become increasingly difficult considering how people are filling websites with AI-generated junk. By collaborating with news agencies, OpenAI will have unhindered access to historical as well as real-time data that can be freely used for training their future models.  

By partnering with news companies, OpenAI is setting a safe path for third party accountability. Associated Press and American Journalism Project, might just be the beginning of media control.