Google To Pay Wall Street Journal-Parent Up To $6 Million Annually For AI Content & Products: Report

Google's move comes at a time when AI firms are seeking collaborations with news organisations to obtain licenses for their archived content.

Google has entered into a new agreement with News Corp, the parent company of the renowned Wall Street Journal. According to a report by The Information, Google will be paying News Corp between $5 million and $6 million annually for the development of fresh AI-related content and products.

This collaboration builds upon an existing partnership between Google and News Corp, as confirmed by sources familiar with the matter cited by The Information, including a News Corp employee. However, a spokesperson from News Corp clarified to Reuters that while they have several partnerships with Google across their businesses, they do not have an AI content licensing deal with the tech giant.

Eye On AI

The initiative comes at a time when AI firms are seeking collaborations with news organisations to obtain licenses for their archived content, which is utilised in training their chatbots. Notably, similar agreements have been struck between other AI firms like OpenAI and renowned news publishers such as Financial Times and Axel Springer, the parent company of Politico.

Meanwhile, in a separate development, a consortium of US newspapers, including prominent titles like the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, has taken legal action against tech giants Microsoft and OpenAI. Filed in a New York federal court, the lawsuit alleges the unauthorised use of journalists' work for training artificial intelligence systems.

The plaintiffs, comprising eight newspapers under the ownership of investment firm Alden Global Capital's MediaNews Group, accused Microsoft and OpenAI of unlawfully utilising millions of their articles to train AI models, including Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

This legal action mirrors similar ongoing battles against tech giants, with previous complaints lodged by prominent media outlets like The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet.

Steven Lieberman, the legal representative for the MediaNews publications, emphasised that the rise of OpenAI owes a considerable debt to the works of others. Lieberman underscored that while the defendants invest in various resources, they seem to neglect the importance of compensating content creators for their intellectual property.