OpenAI pays Dotdash Meredith more than 16 million for data
People, Brides, Liquor – Dotdash Meredith is home to numerous special interest magazines. OpenAI pays millions for their content.
(Image: Shutterstock/ioda)
In future, OpenAI will pay Dotdash Meredith 16 million US dollars a year to use the publisher's content. However, these are only the fixed costs; there will also be additional variable payments that will only be calculated afterwards. This relates to the use of the content as an output of ChatGPT and Co. This can be seen from the quarterly figures announced by IAC's Chief Financial Officer, Chris Halpin. IAC is the parent company of Dotdash Meredith. It is not known how high the additional revenue will be.
The deal was reported by AdWeek, which noticed the item in the quarterly figures. In the third quarter, there was an increase of USD 4.1 million in income from licenses. The CFO said that this was money from OpenAI and was a good indication of what they would receive annually from OpenAI – so at least 16 million US dollars in total.
OpenAI and the deals with publishers
The fact that OpenAI would license content from Dotdash Meredith had already been announced in May, but not the terms of the agreement. OpenAI has also concluded similar deals with numerous other publishers. The AI company is paying Axel Springer Verlag tens of millions of euros, for example. Since then, ChatGPT has preferred to respond with information from Bild, Welt and other Axel Springer titles. In addition to the money, know-how and assistance with the company's own AI strategy will also flow to the publishing house.
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There is another partnership between OpenAI and News Corp. –, one of the world's largest publishers, which owns the Sun, the Wall Street Journal and the Times, among others. OpenAI is to pay around 250 million US dollars over five years, but the figure has not been confirmed. Sam Altman celebrated the partnership as a "proud moment for journalism and technology". Publishers who do not have a deal with OpenAI are likely to see things differently. Not only do they have no income from license agreements, their content is also less visible on ChatGPT and other products from the company.
However, OpenAI also faces the problem that they can only use content for training their AI models that they have either licensed or that is freely available. This reduces the availability of data. OpenAI cannot conclude such costly contracts with all the publishers in the world. The AI company is already on a shaky financial footing.
(emw)
