• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, June 1, 2026

The Associated Press (AP) and OpenAI are back in business in a data-licensing deal as elections draw near. Although unconfirmed, the move signals the possibility of new audience data connected to ads.

“Generative AI is a fast-moving space with tremendous implications for the news industry," stated Kristin Heitmann, AP senior vice president and chief revenue officer. She called out OpenAI's ability to recognize that "fact-based, nonpartisan news content is essential to this evolving technology, and they respect the value of our intellectual property."

The wire service last week announced an expanded deal with OpenAI to license its election data beginning this year and extending through 2029.

Although there is no mention in the announcement of an expanded service focused on political data for ChatGPT users, the licensing deal likely signals a new service from OpenAI that would give people searching for information current stats on political data -- similar to what Google has offered for years.

Google has served forms of political data in search results with an experimental feature for candidates to post content. The feature launched in January 2016, and Google then launched a transparency report in 2018.

AP offers live tracking data through an agreement with Google signed in 2020.

Google does not publicly disclose all details about its election-data agreements.

AP's agreement with OpenAI -- which begins this year and extends through the 2028 U.S. election season -- makes use of AP's vote-count system.

AP counts the vote in U.S. national, state and local elections to ensure that the world knows the results on Election Day.

This is not AP's first agreement with OpenAI. Last year, the media organization agreed to a partnership with OpenAI. The company signed an agreement to pay an undisclosed to license AP’s news archives.

OpenAI also signed licensing deals with other media companies such as Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.

The partnership expands the AP’s relationship with OpenAI, nearly three years after the two struck a two-year content-licensing deal to use AP stories to help train its technology, including ChatGPT.

AP has provided a vote-counting service to several partners such as broadcast networks, CNN and Fox News. It also has an agreement with Kalshi to provide the prediction market platform with vote count and race-call data.

OpenAI seeks to improve the reliability of election information in ChatGPT. In a blog post on Wednesday it described how it will rely on AP’s vote-count data this fall for elections in the U.S. and Brazil and on the elections information nonprofit Democracy Works to help users find where to vote.

OpenAI's Model Spec principle Seeking the Truth Together outlines its commitment to keeping ChatGPT objective by default, with users in control -- including when users engage in political conversations, according to the company's blog post.

The model is designed to avoid behavior that would manipulate a user or to conceal relevant facts or viewpoints to nudge them in a particular direction.

Last fall, OpenAI announced a new political bias evaluation that it uses to test the ability of its models to remain objective.