Amazon will pay The New York Times Co. at least $20 million for the right to utilize its journalism in developing the tech giant’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The agreement, initially announced in May, allows Amazon to leverage editorial content from the NYT’s daily journalism, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic for AI-related applications.
These applications include real-time summaries and excerpts of Times articles within Amazon products like Alexa, as well as training Amazon’s foundation models, according to a joint statement released earlier this summer. For Amazon, with a market cap exceeding $2 trillion, the $20 million payment is relatively small. However, it represents approximately 1 percent of The New York Times Co.’s operating budget for 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This agreement surfaces amidst ongoing litigation between The New York Times and Microsoft and OpenAI, concerning alleged copyright infringement related to the use of NYT content in ChatGPT. A judge ruled earlier this year that The Times’ case against OpenAI can proceed. Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
