• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, May 29, 2024

OpenAI is continuing to rack up trophy publishing companies. Only days after announcing a strategic partnership with News Corp., the genAI company has signed deals with Vox Media and The Atlantic.

The financial terms were not disclosed at deadline.  

Vox Media runs such properties as The Verge, New York Magazine, Eater and SB Nation. OpenAI will enhance its technology with Vox Media’s archives, while recognizing the value of that intellectual property. 

In turn, Vox Media will use OpenAI technology for Forte, a first-party data platform that is available across all Vox Media sites and its ad marketplace, Concert.

Both firms will cooperate in leveraging OpenAI’s technology to develop products for Vox Media’s readers and advertising partners.

Vox hopes to use generative AI to “innovate for our audiences and customers, protect and grow the value of our work and intellectual property, and boost productivity and discoverability to elevate the talent and creativity of our exceptional journalists and creators,” says Jim Bankoff, co-founder, chair and CEO of Vox Media. 

The Atlantic agreement will give the publisher a voice in shaping how news is surfaced and presented in future real-time discovery products. Queries that bring The Atlantic to the surface will include attribution and a link to read the full article on theatlantic.com.

As part of this agreement, The Atlantic and OpenAI are also collaborating on product and technology. In addition, The Atlantic’s product team will have access to OpenAI technology to share feedback and use-cases. 

The Atlantic is now developing an experimental microsite called Atlantic Labs. This will help it determine how AI can be used to develop new products and features.

“We believe that people searching with AI models will be one of the fundamental ways that people navigate the web in the future,” says Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic. 

Thompson adds the partnership will ”make The Atlantic’s reporting and stories more discoverable to their millions of users, and to have a voice in shaping how news is surfaced on their platforms.”

“Enabling access to The Atlantic’s reporting in our products will allow users to more deeply interact with thought-provoking news,” says Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI. 

Lightcap adds, “We are dedicated to supporting high-quality journalism and the publishing ecosystem.”  

The News Corp. agreement, said to be worth $250 million to News Corp. over a five-year period, will allow OpenAI to display material from News Corp. in response to user questions.

OpenAI also recently signed contracts with Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times and Axel Springer, allowing forms of content usage. But it has also been sued by the New York Times and eight Alden Global Capital newspapers for allegedly misappropriating their content.