Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing organizations, seeking permission to use their material in the company’s development of generative artificial intelligence systems, according to four people familiar with the discussions. .
The technology giant has floated multiyear deals worth at least $50 million to license archives of news articles, said people with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. News organizations contacted by Apple include Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue and The New Yorker; NBC News; and IAC, which owns People, The Daily Beast and Better Homes and Gardens.
The negotiations mark one of the earliest 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 refer to as neural networks, is developed by using troves of images or digital text to recognize patterns. By analyzing thousands of pictures 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 using the technology. Tools can change the way people work and generate billions of dollars in sales.
But Apple is not in the public discussion of AI Its virtual assistant, Siri, has remained unchanged in the decade since its release.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment. In a call with analysts last month, Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, said Apple is “continually” connected to AI but declined to elaborate.
Some of the publishers contacted by Apple were lukewarm on the overture. After years of on-again-off-again commercial deals with tech companies like Meta, the owner of Facebook, publishers have been wary of entering the Silicon Valley business.
Some publishing executives are concerned that Apple’s terms are too broad, according to three people familiar with the negotiations. The initial pitch covers broad licensing of publishers’ archives of published content, with publishers potentially on the hook for any legal liability that may arise from Apple’s use of their content.
Apple has also been vague about how it intends to apply generative AI to the news industry, the people said, a potential competitive risk given Apple’s large audience for news on its devices.
However, some news executives are optimistic that Apple’s approach could lead to a meaningful partnership. Two people familiar with the discussions took a positive note of the long-term prospects of a deal, which diverges Apple’s approach to seeking behavioral consent from other artificial intelligence-enabled companies, accused of seeking licensing deals with news organizations after they have used their content to train generative models.
In recent years, Apple executives have been debating how to gather the data needed to build generative AI products, according to two people familiar with the work. Some of its rivals have been accused of taking written material from around the internet without the permission of the artists, writers and coders who created it, leading to several copyright lawsuits.
Apple is reluctant to pull information from the internet, partly because of its commitment to privacy. After it acquired social analytics start-up Topsy in 2013, Apple management demanded that Topsy stop collecting information from Twitter, saying doing so violated the company’s policy against collecting data on customers of Apple, which may also post on social media sites, these. said two people.
The explosion of artificial intelligence has raised alarms among news executives, many of whom worry that generative AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT could attract readers who would otherwise consume their news platforms for their own subscribers and advertisers.
Print news organizations, which decades ago saw their lucrative classifieds business demolished by online competitors, are particularly wary about striking deals with AI organization, which interacts cautiously in keeping with their existing businesses.
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 deals with American Journalism Project and the German publisher Axel Springer.
“We are optimistic that we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together in supporting a rich news ecosystem,” said the OpenAI spokesperson.
