Apple explores AI deals with news publishers

Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing agencies, seeking permission to use their hardware in the company’s development of generative artificial intelligence systems, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

The tech giant has initiated multi-year deals worth at least $50 million to license news article archives, said people with knowledge of the negotiations, who spoke under on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. Media outlets contacted by Apple include Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue and The New Yorker; NBCNews; and IAC, which owns People, The Daily Beast and Better Homes and Gardens.

The negotiations are one of the first examples of how Apple is trying to catch up with rivals in the race to develop generative AI, which allows computers to create images and chat like a human. The technology, which artificial intelligence experts call neural networks, is built using a multitude of digital photos or text to recognize patterns. By analyzing thousands of photos of cats, for example, a computer can learn to recognize a cat.

Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta and other companies have released chatbots and other products built with this technology. These tools could change the way people work and generate billions of dollars in sales.

But Apple has been absent from the public debate on AI. Its virtual assistant, Siri, has remained largely stagnant in the decade since its release.

An Apple advocate declined to comment. On a call with analysts last month, Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, said Apple had work “in progress” related to AI, but declined to elaborate.

Some of the publishers contacted by Apple were lukewarm about this opening. After years of on-again, off-again business deals with tech companies like Facebook owner Meta, publishers are now wary of doing business with Silicon Valley.

Several publishing executives were concerned that Apple’s terms were too broad, according to three people familiar with the negotiations. The initial pitch covered a broad license for publishers’ archives of published content, with publishers potentially liable for any legal liability that might arise from Apple’s use of their content.

Apple was also vague about how it planned to apply generative AI to the news industry, the sources said, a potential competitive risk given Apple’s large audience for news on its devices .

Still, some news executives were optimistic that Apple’s approach could eventually lead to a meaningful partnership. Two people close to the discussions sounded a positive note about the long-term prospects of a deal, contrasting Apple’s approach of asking permission with the behavior of other AI-based companies, which have been accused of having sought licensing agreements with news agencies after them. had already used their content to train generative models.

In recent years, Apple executives have debated how to accumulate the data needed to create generative AI products, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some of its competitors have been accused of scraping written materials from the Internet without permission from the artists, writers and coders who created them, leading to several copyright lawsuits.

Apple is reluctant to pull information from the Internet, in part because of its commitment to privacy. After acquiring social analytics startup Topsy in 2013, Apple executives demanded that Topsy stop collecting information from Twitter, saying it violated the company’s policy against collecting customer data Apple, which could also post on the social networking site, these two people said.

The explosion of artificial intelligence has raised alarms among news executives, many of whom fear that generative AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT could attract readers who would otherwise consume their news on platforms for their own subscribers and advertisers.

Print media, which decades ago saw its lucrative classifieds business demolished by online competitors, have been particularly cautious about entering into deals with AI organizations, cautiously engaging in the concern to preserve their existing activities.

In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company respects “the rights of content creators and owners and believes they should benefit from AI technology,” citing its recent agreements with the American Journalism Project and German publisher Axel Springer.

“We are optimistic that we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together to support a rich information ecosystem,” the OpenAI spokesperson said.

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