Amazon and The New York Times Strike AI Licensing Deal

The New York Times (NYT) signed a deal with Amazon to license its editorial content for “AI-related uses.” The deal also includes the integration of NYT content into the Amazon platform, including brief summaries and other journalistic material on relevant product pages.

According to an NYT press release, the partnership will “[broaden] the companies’ existing relationship, and will bring additional value to Amazon customers and bring Times journalism to wider audiences.”

Amazon will license editorial content from the NYT, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic. Besides integrations of editorial content directly into Amazon’s product pages, the deal also gives Amazon the possibility to use NYT content to train Alexa and its proprietary large language models (LLMs).

“Whenever it makes sense within the consumer experience on Amazon’s products, they will provide direct links to Times products, where readers can get the full Times experience,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a NYT spokesperson, to media outlets.

“The deal is consistent with our long-held principle that high-quality journalism is worth paying for,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, NYT’s chief executive, in a note to staff. “It aligns with our deliberate approach to ensuring that our work is valued appropriately, whether through commercial deals or through the enforcement of our intellectual property rights.”

This is Amazon’s first agreement of this kind and a notable step in its growing relationship with news publishers. OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT, has already signed similar deals with publishers such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more. This comes approximately two years after the NYT sued OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using its copyrighted content to train their LLMs.

Last year, a coalition of five of Canada’s biggest news companies sued OpenAI for similar reasons, while outlets like the Associated Press penned deals with the AI giant to handle its copyrighted content for training.