Amid Meta hogging the limelight with their Llama-2 reveal and Microsoft sharing the attention, OpenAI has also been keeping themselves busy this week – in a different way of sorts. From rolling out additional features such as custom instructions for ChatGPT to extending support for older models of OpenAI API to users, the company has also been focusing on ‘itself’. They are slowly building a path to control media with a slew of news agency partnerships through Associated Press and American Journalist Project. Interestingly, Google has reportedly demonstrated their AI tool ‘Genesis’ to the executives at The New York Times, The Washington Post and News Corp.
What’s with big tech hovering over media publications? Is it a mere battle over media supremacy? Or, is it a ploy to support their individual needs?
The AI – Data Tradeoff
Local news rooms have been struggling owing to reduced viewers, advertising and financial crunch which has led to closure of many outlets. By 2025, the US is set to lose a third of their newspaper outlets. In this bleeding market, aid offered by big tech in the form of money and AI tools is their rescue boat. In return, massive data is exchanged.
OpenAI recently signed a multi-million dollar partnership with Associated Journalism Project (AJP)- their biggest collaboration with any media organisation. The company announced a $5 million partnership with AJP and another $5 million through API credits for AJP’s grantee organisations – which means that OpenAI will indirectly tie up with AJP’s 41 news agencies. The agreement is said to benefit AJP by exploring AI tools for local news. In return, though not confirmed, OpenAI will get access to historical and real-time data from these news agencies – the coveted goldmine for training their future models.
A week ago, OpenAI announced their tie-up with one of the biggest news agencies in the US – Associated Press (AP). The said partnership is said to help examine the potential use cases for generative AI in news products and services. At the same time, OpenAI will gain access to AP’s news data from 1985.
However, Google’s approach seems to be on a different tangent.
Building a Defence Strategy
Google has been reportedly demonstrating their AI tool with big news establishments, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and News Corp. who owns The Wall Street Journal, in a bid to help journalists in writing and automating certain tasks. A few of them who saw the Google pitch believe that this move takes the efforts that have gone into producing accurate news stories for granted.
Unlike OpenAI who has been tying up with not-for-profit and local news agencies, Google’s approach is two-pronged. Apart from data access, Google’s future tie-up with major news publications is a probable move to avoid the ongoing payment tussle that Google is facing for putting up news content without paying publishers. In Australia, Google is paying news companies for putting up their content on their platform. In Canada, Google is planning to remove links to Canadian news if the law mandating them to pay news publishers comes into effect. If Google’s AI tech that was demonstrated is adopted by news publishers, it is likely that the company can evade such problems.
Considering how companies such as Twitter, Reddit and StackOverflow, the databanks of today, are restricting content from being scraped off their website, training AI models will become more challenging. Recently, 8000 authors signed a letter urging companies such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and few others to offer compensation for using their copyrighted work to train models. To probably bypass future shortage of data and overcome any form of legal tussles such as plagiarism and copyrighting, OpenAI and Google are building a proactive shield now itself.
The Unsolvable Setbacks
While setting a future path, OpenAI still has a long way to go with fixing their current hiccups. The company finds itself in one soup or another. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI’s activities over risks of security breach and leaking of personal data. A similar issue on personal data leak led to OpenAI retracting their Bing web browser feature within two weeks of releasing it on the ChatGPT mobile app.
With data security and rising accusations of churning inaccurate data, how will OpenAI be able to effectively work with news media where factual and accurate information is a basic necessity? While the larger plan for tie-ups with the media may be obscured at the moment, it currently looks like a plan to save their skin from future predicaments.
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