Newsletter
From the moment ChatGPT hit the general public, several industries shuddered just a bit, and one of them was the news industry. One major fear on every journalist’s mind was having entire newsrooms full of writers gutted to facilitate a handful of people pumping out AI-generated articles. So, you’d expect major news companies to do SOMETHING to protect the integrity of the news industry. Well, that’s not the case, as more major news corporations are selling out to AI.
One of the main hurdles that AI companies have to jump is copyrighted material. Right now, The New York Times is suing Microsoft and OpenAI for using its copyrighted news articles to train the GPT models. That lawsuit is still going on, so we’re going to need to wait for the final verdict on that.
So, companies like Alphabet, Meta, and OpenAI are looking to strike deals with companies to gain access to their copyrighted material. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how messed up that is. Ever since AI tools like DALL-E hit the scene, millions of creators have contributed to the very technology that can make them obsolete without even trying. This is because the companies hosting their creations care more about the almighty dollar than people.
For example, recent reports point to Alphabet and Meta contacting media companies like Disney, Netflix, and Warner Brothers to use their catalog of content to train their video models. We’re talking about decades of potential human-made content going on to power the technology that will put filmmakers out of their jobs.
At this point, neither Disney nor Netflix directly agreed to contribute content, but they’re looking to partner in other ways. Warner Brother, on the other hand, seemed more eager to take up the offer.
More major news corporations are selling out to AI; is it right or wrong?
In another example of big companies selling out, we have news corporations. Recently, News Corp, a major news company that owns The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Australian, The New York Post, The Wallstreet Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, The Advertiser, Herald Sun, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Courier Mail, and Investor’s Business Daily struck a deal with OpenAI so that the company can gain access to its material to train its GPT models. News Corp made a whopping $2.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, so it’s safe to call it a big company. The deal was worth a whopping $250 million over the next five years.
Imagine how many writers within those papers now have to deal with the fact that their work is being used to train ChatGPT. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s not the only company going through this. Other major companies like Axel Springer (which owns Politico and Business Insider), DotMash Meredith (which owns People, Investopedia, Food & Wine, Better Homes & Gardens, and InStyle), The Associated Press, and The Financial Times also made deals with OpenAI.
Well, just recently, Vox Media, the company that owns The Verge and The Atlantic, also struck a deal with OpenAI. This deal will serve its articles up to OpenAI on a silver platter. We don’t know how much money this partnership involves, but we’re sure that it’s in the millions.
The ethical struggle
It’s hard to pick an objective stance on this matter once you know some of the forces putting a chokehold on the news industry. Have you heard of Google’s AI Overviews; AKA, Google’s middle finger to the news industry? The company provides overviews of Google searches rather than providing links to news sites. If that wasn’t enough, Meta did much the same thing with Meta AI. The company even stopped showing links to news websites on its platforms.
So, Meta and Google won’t have to split as much ad revenue with news organizations… good for them. But, you can see how scummy this is.
Also, talking about scummy behavior, Google has been threatening to stop showing news links and shut down funds supporting journalists because California wants it to pay journalists. The company could potentially devastate the California news industry by pulling links to California news sites.
These deals can help, technically
This is important to note because the nature of these deals really makes this a bit of an ethical issue. In an age when Google and Meta are trying so hard not to pay journalists, OpenAI seems to be picking up the slack. Rather than scraping their data, the company is actually paying these companies for access to the information.
The money that OpenAI is paying these companies will, ostensibly, go on to help fund those news sites. So, on paper, it seems that these deals could help these news sites flourish. However, there’s no telling if that’s 100% true. We don’t know if these companies are distributing any of the money down to their writers or pocketing it. That remains to be seen. In any case, there’s always the chance that these deals are serving some good for news companies.
But, things aren’t all cheery
The ostensible benefits make this whole scenario complicated. Sure, companies might have more money, but we’re not talking about Mom and Pop papers, we’re talking about million-dollar and billion-dollar corporations. Not to be cynical, but large companies have a habit of sacrificing people for the sake of more money. Companies are cutting creators and opting for AI models. We’re seeing AI-generated ads by companies like Progressive Insurance (made $2.3 billion in Q1 2024). So, we can’t rule out the possibility of any of the aforementioned news companies still shedding workers.
These deals are giving OpenAI more access to data from current events. With information from these news sites, ChatGPT is better suited to provide up-to-date reporting, thus eliminating the need for readers to go to these websites. If you’re a writer, your article will be fed into the GPT model. So, an increasing number of people will only see overviews of the story you covered rather than read your article.
Major corporations are selling out to AI. Is it worth the extra money?
Well, with how many of the major companies that govern the tech and news industry behave, it doesn’t seem likely. Yes, job cuts are also a thing with smaller papers, and there have, no doubt, been people tossed up for a guy who knows how to use ChatGPT in smaller companies.
However, major companies are more money-focused most of the time. We’ve seen this time and time again. Larger companies are adamant about employing AI on a large scale to cut back costs, raise profits, and keep the investors happy. Electronic Arts is looking to implement AI on a large scale to make games as quickly as possible. This is why these deals could have a major negative effect on the news industry.
Plainly put, we just can’t trust these companies. Yes, they’re getting more money, but how much of the money will actually go into their workers’ pockets? How much is going to pad the CEOs’ salaries? Those are bold questions to ask, but we wouldn’t need to ask these questions if major corporations haven’t demonstrated gross greed over the years.
Right now, it’s a waiting game to find out what sort of effect this will have on the news industry.