Google and News Corp. on Tuesday struck a multi-million dollar deal focused on AI content. Surprisingly, the deal comes amid the frosty relationship between AI and mainstream media companies.
Why is Google Paying $6 Million to News Corp.?
Details are still emerging, but reports suggest the deal will see Google pay News Corp. between $5 million and $6 million annually to develop new AI-powered content and products.
News Corp. is the parent firm of popular mainstream media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, including the New York Post.
Previously, in 2021, Google reportedly made “significant payments” to News Corp. to feature its stories on the Google News Showcase platform for three years, which supposedly ended this year.
Thus, it appears the new deal is a continuation of the existing partnership between both companies, only that it will focus on AI-related content and products.
Google’s pursuit of AI services has intensified over the past year, especially since the inception of ChatGPT, which prompted several other big tech companies to follow suit amid the competitive threat the chatbot and AI in general posed.
Financial Times reported on April 3rd that Google is considering launching new “premium” features powered by generative artificial intelligence, which will mark the first time Google is putting its service behind a paywall.
Google plans to add AI-powered search features and Gemini Assistant to the premium service. However, it remains unclear if and when the service will eventually launch. It’s not unlikely that the AI content from New Corp. could be featured on Google’s premium service.
The Friction Between AI and Media Companies Continues
Last year, Google and several AI companies were slammed with lawsuits for unauthorisedly scraping content on the internet to train their AI models. Even today, the companies are still being sued.
NYTimes reported Tuesday that eight US daily newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The publishers accused the companies of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission to train ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
The media companies include The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register, and The St. Paul Pioneer Press, according to NYTimes.
In the complaint filed with a federal court in the U.S. Southern District of New York, the publications asked for a jury trial, saying they are owned compensations by Microsoft and OpenAI, although no specific amount was stated.
