$20 million a year, equivalent to 1% of revenue, New York Times "sells content to AI"
Amazon has signed a multi-year AI content licensing agreement with the New York Times, which will bring the New York Times an annual revenue of $20 million to $25 million. Amazon will use materials such as news from the New York Times to train its artificial intelligence models. This is the New York Times' first AI-related licensing agreement and also Amazon's first collaboration of this kind with a publisher
Amazon reaches AI content licensing agreement with The New York Times, with annual revenue up to $25 million.
On July 30, media reports citing informed sources stated that a multi-year AI content licensing agreement signed between Amazon and The New York Times will bring in annual revenue of $20 million to $25 million for The New York Times, which is nearly 1% of its total revenue for 2024. The agreement was announced by both parties in May this year.
According to the agreement, Amazon will use content from The New York Times' news, cooking column, and sports brand The Athletic to train its artificial intelligence models. Amazon will also be able to display summaries and excerpts of The New York Times' content in its products and services, including the Alexa voice assistant.
This is The New York Times' first AI-related licensing agreement and Amazon's first collaboration of this kind with a publisher.
The Value and Licensing of News Content in the AI Era
With the popularity of AI chatbots, traditional news websites are experiencing a decline in traffic and the resulting advertising revenue. Technology companies are increasingly signing content licensing agreements with news publishers to train AI models using news articles and scrape information from news websites to provide users with real-time Q&A services about current events.
For example, OpenAI has reached similar agreements with several publishers, including a partnership with News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. According to previous reports from The Wall Street Journal, this five-year agreement could be worth over $250 million in total. Additionally, OpenAI has signed a three-year agreement valued at $25 million to $30 million with Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider and Politico.
Diversity of Content Licensing Agreements
Content licensing agreements between different AI companies and publishers have varying financial terms and structures, depending on the type of products and services offered by the AI companies and how they use news content. Licensing agreements may include cash payments or take other forms of financial arrangements.
Informed sources revealed that the agreement between The New York Times and Amazon involves cash payments, while other agreements may include different financial terms. Such agreements demonstrate the new value of news content in the AI era and provide an important reference standard for future collaborations between publishers and artificial intelligence companies.
News is not free! Charging fees and protecting rights in the AI era
Despite reaching a collaboration with Amazon, The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. At the same time, two subsidiaries of News Corp are also suing the AI-driven search engine Perplexity over content usage disputes. This reflects the complex situation faced by news publishers in the AI era, where they need to generate revenue through content licensing while also protecting their copyright interests.
The New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien stated at the announcement of the agreement that Amazon's deal "reflects the principle we have long upheld—that high-quality journalism deserves fair compensation."
