OpenAI partners with European media giants Le Monde and El Pais

US generative artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI is widening its grip on European media by partnering with Le Monde and Prisa Media publications, which include El Pais, Cinco Dias, and El Huffpost.

OpenAI will be able to use the publications’ content to train its AI models. In the coming months, ChatGPT users will also have access to summaries of news content from the publishers and links to their original articles, OpenAI said in a blog post on Wednesday.

It comes as various copyright lawsuits mount against AI companies, including the current one against OpenAI by the New York Times, which is suing the organisation over claims its copyright was infringed to train ChatGPT.

“In partnership with Le Monde and Prisa Media, our goal is to enable ChatGPT users around the world to connect with the news in new ways that are interactive and insightful,” OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in the post.

Financial details of the partnership have not been disclosed.

“Our partnership with OpenAI is a strategic move to ensure the dissemination of reliable information to AI users, safeguarding our journalistic integrity and revenue streams in the process,” Le Monde chief executive Louis Dreyfus said in the post.

Meanwhile, Prisa Media chief executive Carlos Nunez called the OpenAI alliance a “step toward the future of news”.

OpenAI also partnered with the German multinational Axel Springer and The Associated Press last year.

“Our partnerships underscore our vision to develop advanced AI tools that empower industries, such as journalism, and solve problems that are otherwise out of reach,” OpenAI said in the blog post.

The new partnerships come as the European Parliament gave final approval on Wednesday to the world’s most far-reaching rules to govern artificial intelligence, including powerful systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has human-like capabilities to produce text but can also spread disinformation.