The deal will allow ChatGPT to summarize, quote, and link to Financial Times articles when answering user prompts, with proper attribution. In return, OpenAI will work with the FT to create new AI-powered products and tools. Details like the specific dollar amounts OpenAI offers publications or the legal battles with other news outlets are omitted to keep the focus on the FT-OpenAI partnership.
In a move that could reshape how AI accesses and utilizes premium journalism, the Financial Times has inked a deal with OpenAI to license its content for ChatGPT. The pioneering agreement will let the AI distill the FT’s renowned reporting into concise summaries, quotes, and linked articles when responding to user queries.
But this is no one-way street. OpenAI will collaborate closely with the esteemed 134-year-old publication to develop cutting-edge AI tools and products that could redefine how journalism is created, distributed, and consumed in the digital age.
FT CEO John Ridding frames the partnership as a principled embrace of AI’s potential, proclaiming: “It’s right that AI platforms pay publishers for using their material.” He argues giving ChatGPT access to the FT’s trove of reliable, expert journalism directly benefits users hungering for credible information.
Yet Ridding insists the deal is no death knell for human reporters, affirming an “ongoing commitment to human journalism” even as the FT explores generative AI’s creative possibilities.
The deal captures AI’s delicate duality for media firms – both an existential threat and a transformative opportunity. By selectively opening certain data streams to ChatGPT while retaining control over its core editorial ops, the FT hedges against extinction while piloting novel AI-augmented storytelling and product frontiers.
As the first major press outfit to embrace OpenAI so deeply, the FT has carved an avant-garde path. If the partnership pioneers fruitful AI-human journalistic symbiosis, it could inspire other wary publications to follow suit in monetizing their content and rebooting their operations.
The FT’s existing use of AI rivals like Anthropic’s Claude AI suggests its OpenAI alliance may harbor ulterior motives. By cozying up to the ChatGPT creator, the publication could seek a strategic hedge – avoiding overreliance on any single AI actor as competition heats up to control journalism’s factual airwaves in the generative era.
