The Times and Amazon Announce AI Licensing Deal
The New York Times Co. has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant's artificial intelligence platforms, the company said Thursday.
The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement also encompasses material from NYT Cooking, the Times' food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports.
This is the first instance of the Times agreeing to a licensing arrangement with a focus on generative AI technology.
In 2023, the Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by the Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.
Financial terms of the licensing deal with Amazon were not disclosed.
'The deal is consistent with our long-held principle that high-quality journalism is worth paying for,' Meredith Kopit Levien, the CEO of the Times, said in a note to staff. 'It aligns with our deliberate approach to ensuring that our work is valued appropriately, whether through commercial deals or through the enforcement of our intellectual property rights.'
Amazon's use of editorial content from the Times could extend to the Alexa software found on its smart speakers. In some instances, excerpts from Times reporting will include attribution and a link back to the Times' website. Material from the Times will also be used to train Amazon's proprietary AI models, the company said.
Amazon declined to comment beyond what was in the statement issued by the Times.
News organizations have wavered on how to contend with the rapid emergence of AI technology, elements of which have been developed by software programs that ingest the content of millions of online news stories.
Even as the Times pursued litigation against OpenAI, other news outlets -- including Axel Springer, Condé Nast and News Corp, among others -- entered into licensing agreements to receive revenue in exchange for the use of their materials. The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, agreed to a deal with OpenAI last month.
Amazon itself has been playing a bit of catch-up in the AI race.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, kicking off the AI boom, Amazon was caught flat-footed, much like Google, Meta and Apple.
Chatbots like ChatGPT are driven by what scientists call neural networks, mathematical systems that can learn skills by analyzing huge amounts of digital data. By pinpointing patterns in vast troves of Wikipedia articles, news stories and chat logs, for instance, these systems can learn to generate humanlike text on their own, including poems, term papers and computer programs.
Like Google, Microsoft and Meta, Amazon had the computing power needed for the task. As the world's largest cloud computing company, it ran a vast network of data centers filled with the specialized computer chips used to train AI systems. But it lacked some of the talent needed to build the most sophisticated systems, and the company had not prioritized the technology to the degree of OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft.
Last June, Amazon inked a deal with a key AI startup called Adept, bringing on many of its employees, including its founder, David Luan. Amazon paid Adept at least $330 million to license its technology, three people with knowledge of the transaction said.
Amazon later inked a similar deal with another important startup called Covariant, bringing on its top talent including its co-founder Pieter Abbeel, a professor of robotics at the University of California at Berkeley, who previously worked for OpenAI.
Luan and Abbeel are now leading an Amazon research lab that aims to build 'artificial general intelligence,' or AGI, shorthand for a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. This ambitious goal is also the stated aim of OpenAI and other leading research labs, such as Google DeepMind. Data licensed from the Times could help fuel the efforts of Amazon's AGI lab.
In addition to its own AI work, Amazon has established a close partnership with Anthropic, one of OpenAI's chief rivals. Over the past two years, the tech giant has invested $4 billion in the startup.
Amazon's investment in Anthropic is not just a simple equity stake. Much like Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, it gives Amazon access to Anthropic's AI systems -- and commits Amazon computer power to the startup. Amazon also receives an early shot at making Anthropic's AI models available to customers of its cloud computing service.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2025
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Verge
24 minutes ago
- The Verge
Jony Ive's OpenAI device gets the Laurene Powell Jobs nod of approval
The mysterious AI gadget being created by OpenAI and former Apple design chief Jony Ive has been given the thumbs up from Laurene Powell Jobs. In a new interview published by The Financial Times, the two reminisce about Jony Ive's time working at Apple alongside Powell Jobs' late husband, Steve, and trying to make up for the 'unintentional' harms associated with those efforts. 'Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment,' Ive said, adding that working on the incoming AI device alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is motivated by a sense that 'humanity deserves better.' In May, Ive said his latest work is driven by owning the 'unintended consequences' associated with the iPhone, alluding to smartphone-related concerns like users being addicted to screens and social media. Ive again acknowledged this, and says the collaboration with Altman has revived his optimism for technology. 'If you make something new, if you innovate, there will be consequences unforeseen, and some will be wonderful and some will be harmful. While some of the less positive consequences were unintentional, I still feel responsibility. And the manifestation of that is a determination to try and be useful.' Powell Jobs, who has remained close friends with Ive since Steve Jobs passed in 2011, echoes his concerns, saying that 'there are dark uses for certain types of technology,' even if it 'wasn't designed to have that result.' Powell Jobs has invested in both Ive's LoveFrom design and io hardware startups following his departure from Apple. Ive notes that 'there wouldn't be LoveFrom' if not for her involvement. Ive's io company is being purchased by OpenAI for almost $6.5 billion, and with her investment, Powell Jobs stands to gain if the secretive gadget proves anywhere near as successful as the iPhone. The pair gives away no extra details about the device that Ive is building with OpenAI, but Powell Jobs is expecting big things. She says she has watched 'in real time how ideas go from a thought to some words, to some drawings, to some stories, and then to prototypes, and then a different type of prototype,' Powell Jobs said. 'And then something that you think: I can't imagine that getting any better. Then seeing the next version, which is even better. Just watching something brand new be manifested, it's a wondrous thing to behold.'
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Sam Altman said AI agents are acting like junior colleagues — and he's betting that AI could soon 'discover new knowledge'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is betting that AI could soon help "discover new knowledge" and said it is already beginning to act like your junior-level coworkers. "You hear people that talk about their job now is to assign work to a bunch of agents, look at the quality, figure out how it fits together, give feedback, and it sounds a lot like how they work with a team of still relatively junior employees," Altman said of AI agents on Monday during the Snowflake Summit 2025, in a conversation with Snowflake Computing CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy. "I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge, or can figure out solutions to business problems that are kind of very non-trivial," Altman added. The keynote conversation at Snowflake Summit — which explored how organizations can drive immediate impact with the power of AI — comes as new data show that AI is already replacing human workers. Zanele Munyikwa, an economist at Revelio Labs, spoke to Business Insider's Aki Ito about her analysis of online job postings and the impact of AI since ChatGPT's release at the end of 2022. As Ito wrote, "She found that over the past three years, the share of AI-doable tasks in online job postings has declined by 19%." In roles Munyikwa pinpointed as more vulnerable to AI, such as database administrators and IT specialists, the hiring downturn has been as steep as 31%. Over the past quarter, Shopify said that its managers need to explain why a job couldn't be handled by AI before asking for new hires, and Duolingo, the language learning app, said it would replace contract workers with AI. In February, OpenAI launched GPT-4.5, which Altman called "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person." He also described the model as "giant" and "expensive." The rollout is limited to Pro subscribers until the shortage of GPUs is solved. OpenAI also recently launched Codex, a new AI agent aimed at streamlining coding tasks for developers by writing code, fixing bugs, and running tests. Altman said it was already in use by OpenAI's own engineers. Unlike traditional chatbots, the multitasking AI agent can also interact with external software to complete tasks like making a dinner reservation.
Axios
an hour ago
- Axios
Which businesses got part of Tennessee's $1.5 billion tax refund
Tennessee is revealing which businesses got a combined $1.5 billion in state franchise tax refunds — but the list is only available for a limited time. Why it matters: Lawmakers approved a massive franchise tax cut last year, along with three years of retroactive refunds, which were massive drains on the 2024-25 budget. Refunds are expected to account for about $1.5 billion. The state's public database of beneficiaries will only be available through June 30. Zoom in: The state is not disclosing exactly how much each company received. Instead, the results are grouped into brackets: refunds of $750 or less, refunds ranging from $750-$10,000, and refunds of more than $10,000. More than 58,000 entities are included on the refund list. Many companies have multiple entries, reflecting various subsidiaries that got refunds. Companies listed in the highest refund bracket included FedEx (which had 12 separate entries), Amazon, Dollar General and Gov. Bill Lee's family business the Lee Company. Flashback: Supporters of the tax cut, including Lee, argued the design of Tennessee's franchise tax on businesses violated the U.S. Constitution. They said a cadre of Tennessee businesses could sue the state unless lawmakers approved a change that slashed collections.
