The New York Times finalized a multi-year agreement with Amazon that will integrate its editorial content across various Amazon customer platforms, the company revealed on Thursday. Through this partnership, Amazon plans to feature summaries and brief excerpts of The Times‘ content in services such as Alexa and utilize The Times articles to enhance its AI training processes.
This agreement follows a legal battle in which The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI, contending that the companies had illegally copied and used a vast number of its articles to train AI models. Such actions, the publication argued, resulted in a significant loss of potential revenue from subscriptions, licensing, advertising, and affiliate programs. Other media organizations, like The Intercept, Raw Story, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the parent company of IGN and CNET, have also initiated lawsuits against OpenAI under similar allegations. Conversely, some publishers, including The Atlantic, News Corp, and Vox Media, have successfully negotiated AI licensing agreements.
Alongside content from The Times, Amazon will also leverage materials from its sports-focused site, The Athletic, and its culinary platform, NYT Cooking. Earlier this year, Amazon introduced an AI-enhanced version of its Alexa assistant, claiming to have gathered feedback from “hundreds of thousands of customers” during its early access phase. The specifics regarding the financial aspects of this new agreement were not made public.
Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company, articulated the rationale behind the deal, stating in a communication to staff, “This agreement reaffirms our long-standing commitment to the notion that quality journalism deserves compensation. It reflects our intentional strategy to ensure that our work is respected and valued, whether through commercial arrangements or by enforcing our intellectual property rights.”
