Opinion: OpenAI's content deal with Financial Times is an attempt to avoid legal challenges—and an AI 'data apocalypse'

OpenAI's new "strategic partnership" and licensing agreement with the Financial Times (FT) follows similar deals between the US tech company and publishers such as Associated Press, German media giant Axel Springer and French newspaper Le Monde.

OpenAI will license the FT's content to use as training data for its products, including successors to its AI chatbot ChatGPT. The AI systems developed by OpenAI are exposed to this data to help them improve their performance in terms of use of language, context and accuracy. The FT will receive an undisclosed payment as part of the deal.

This is happening against a global backdrop of legal challenges by media companies alleging copyright infringement over the use of their content to train AI products. The most high-profile of these is a case brought by the New York Times against OpenAI. There is also a fear among ...