OpenAI and Future partner on specialist content
OpenAI
OpenAI just struck a deal with Future, the UK media giant behind 200-plus specialist brands, to feed their content into its products. It's the latest sign publishers are choosing licensing deals over lawsuits with AI companies.
Based on reporting by OpenAI — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI has added another name to its growing list of media partners, this time teaming up with Future plc, the London-based publisher that owns more than 200 specialist titles spanning tech, gaming, and lifestyle coverage. The companies announced the tie-up today as a strategic partnership, though neither side has published the financial terms, which is pretty standard for these arrangements.
Future's portfolio is broad enough that most people have read something from it without realizing it belonged to one company. The deal means OpenAI's users will start seeing content pulled from that catalog surfacing inside its products, presumably ChatGPT and any search-style features built on top of it.
This fits a pattern OpenAI has been running for over a year now. It has signed similar agreements with the Associated Press, Axel Springer, News Corp, Condé Nast, and a long list of others, each time trading licensing fees and attribution for legal cover and a steady supply of fresh material. Publishers get paid and get a hedge against being scraped for free; OpenAI gets to say its answers come from real, licensed sources rather than whatever it absorbed during training.
What makes the Future deal notable isn't the size of the check, it's the breadth. Two hundred brands is a lot of specialist expertise in one basket, from gadget reviews to gaming news to health advice, and it gives OpenAI a shortcut to authoritative-sounding answers across a wide range of consumer topics without building that expertise itself.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Another publisher folds content into the AI supply chain, and honestly, good for them, because the alternative is watching Google and OpenAI scrape it for nothing anyway. I just wish these deals came with actual numbers attached, because 'strategic partnership' is doing a lot of work to avoid saying who benefits more.
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