Politico, Business Insider parent Axel Springer inks deal with OpenAI

OpenAI and Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider and Politico, signed a deal to share content on ChatGPT.

The deal allows ChatGPT to pull information to user prompts from articles published on Axel Springer’s publications and provide links to full stories for transparency. It will also enable Axel Springer to build with OpenAI’s technology, the company said in a statement.

Axel Springer owns Business Insider, Politico, and European publications Bild and Welt.

The company said the partnership with OpenAI creates new financial opportunities. Julia Sommerfeld, deputy spokesperson for Axel Springer, tells The Verge ChatGPT will have access to premium paywalled articles on Business Insider but not from paid subscription stories on Politico Pro.

Business Insider editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson sent a memo to reporters in April that it plans to carefully explore how to use AI in its reporting.

The Associated Press inked a similar deal with OpenAI in July, allowing the AI company to train models on its content.

Media organizations have grappled with how to deal with the rise of generative AI. Concern over potential copyright infringement pushed publications like The New York Times, BBC, CNN, Reuters, and The Verge parent company Vox Media to block OpenAI’s web crawler from accessing data.

Still, some news organizations want to use the technology. The New York Times announced it hired a newsroom executive to oversee AI projects, and Forbes built an AI-powered search engine for its articles.