FT Joins Hands With OpenAI Amid Controversy Over Web Scraping
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The Financial Times and OpenAI have
a strategic partnership and licensing agreement that will integrate the newspaper’s journalism into ChatGPT and cooperate to create new AI products for FT readers. However, OpenAI’s closer alliance with publishers does not stop it from still scraping information from the web without permission.
ChatGPT users will be able to see selected attributed summaries, quotes, and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries as part of the agreement. Besides, the FT became a client of ChatGPT Enterprise earlier this year, granting access to all its employees to acquaint themselves with the technology and capitalise on its potential productivity benefits.
“This is a significant agreement in several regards,” remarked John Ridding, FT Group CEO. “It validates the worth of our award-winning journalism and will provide us an early glimpse into how AI surfaces content.”
In the year 2023, there was widespread critique and multiple lawsuits launched against tech corporations. This was due to claims of unauthorised use of copyrighted materials from artists and publishers for training AI models.
The company that received the most heat was OpenAI. They trained their GPT models on data gathered from the internet, without the necessary permissions from the creators. The New York Times consequently sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the previous year, on grounds of copyright infringement.
While underscoring the FT’s dedication to human journalism, Ridding mentioned that the agreement would extend the scope of its newsroom’s work. Simultaneously, it would further the understanding of what their readers are interested in.
“Beyond the advantages to FT, the implications for the industry at large are significant. It is only right that AI platforms pay publishers for the usage of their content. OpenAI recognises the necessity for transparency, attribution and payment – aspects that are crucial for us,” Ridding stated.
Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that OpenAI was utilising scripts from YouTube videos to train its AI models. According to the publication, this practice violates copyright laws, as content creators who upload videos to YouTube maintain the copyright ownership of the material they produce.
Nonetheless, OpenAI argues that its exploitation of internet content remains beneath the protection of the fair use doctrine. Both OpenAI and numerous other tech businesses suggest that their large language models (LLMs) convert the data they cull from the web into an entirely unique creation.
In a conversation with a UK parliamentary committee in January, OpenAI maintained that creating modern-day leading AI systems without utilizing huge amounts of copyrighted data would be impossible.
The COO of OpenAI, Brad Lightcap, voiced his excitement about the partnership with FT saying, “Our alliance and continuing dialogue with FT is focused on finding innovative and efficient ways for AI to empower news organisations and journalists, and enhance the ChatGPT experience with real-time, world-class journalism for millions of people globally.”
This agreement between OpenAI and the Financial Times is the most recent in a series of new collaborations that OpenAI has forged with major news publishers worldwide.
While the financial details of these contracts were not revealed, OpenAI’s recent partnerships with publishers will enable the company to continue training its algorithms on web content, but with the crucial difference being that it now has obtained the necessary permissions to do so.
Ridding said the FT values “the opportunity to be inside the development loop as people discover content in new ways.” He acknowledged the potential for significant advancements and challenges with transformative technologies like AI but emphasised, “what’s never possible is turning back time.”
“It’s important for us to represent quality journalism as these products take shape – with the appropriate safeguards in place to protect the FT’s content and brand,” Ridding added.
The FT has embraced new technologies throughout its history. “We’ll continue to operate with both curiosity and vigilance as we navigate this next wave of change,” Ridding concluded.
(Photo by Utsav Srestha)
See also: OpenAI faces complaint over fictional outputs
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