Amazon and The New York Times Co. have finalized an agreement granting Amazon the right to utilize The New York Times’ journalistic content for training its artificial intelligence models. The financial terms, fully disclosed recently, involve Amazon paying The New York Times Co. a minimum of $20 million.
This agreement, initially revealed in May, allows Amazon to access a range of content produced by The New York Times. This includes not only the editorial content from its daily news publications but also extends to specialized content from NYT Cooking and The Athletic. The intended purpose of this content integration is to enhance Amazon’s AI capabilities.
The collaboration intends to bring real-time summaries and brief excerpts of The New York Times articles into Amazon’s ecosystem of products and services, including voice assistant Alexa. A joint statement issued this summer outlined how Amazon plans to use the licensed content for training its own proprietary foundation models.
While the $20 million payment represents a relatively small fraction of Amazon’s overall financial scale, given its market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion, it constitutes a notable portion of The New York Times Co.’s operational budget. Sources indicate that the $20 million amounts to roughly 1% of the company’s operating budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
This agreement unfolds against the backdrop of ongoing legal disputes involving The New York Times and other technology companies. Specifically, The New York Times has initiated litigation against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement related to the unauthorized use of its content within ChatGPT. A judge recently ruled that The New York Times’ case against OpenAI can proceed, marking a notable development in the legal landscape surrounding AI and copyright.
It is worth noting that Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, maintains a separate connection to the news industry through his ownership of The Washington Post.
