The New York Times and Amazon announce new AI deal

The New York Times (NYT) and Amazon have announced a multi-year licensing agreement that allows the tech giant to display short summaries and excerpts from their articles and The Athletic in their AI products, such as Alexa.  

The deal also allows Amazon to use articles from The New York Times to train their AI models. Amazon will also pull data from NYT Cooking, the publication's recipe hub.

In the official announcement, NYT said, "The collaboration will make The New York Times's original content more accessible to customers across Amazon products and services, including direct links to Times products, and underscores the companies' shared commitment to serving customers with global news and perspectives within Amazon's AI products."   

NYT said the agreement "broadens the companies' existing relationship, and will bring additional value to Amazon customers and bring Times journalism to wider audiences."

The publication clarified the deal will include "real-time display of summaries and short excerpts of Times content within Amazon products and services, such as Alexa, and training Amazon's proprietary foundation models."

The deal is notable because, in December 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI, alleging the company had trained its AI models on data sourced from the publication without authorization. The lawsuit alleged that OpenAI used the data to train chatbots that competed "with the news outlet as a source of reliable information."