NEW YORK: Global news publisher Axel Springer is partnering with OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot, in a first-of-its-kind deal that will deliver summaries of Axel Springer content in response to ChatGPT queries, the companies announced on Wednesday.
As part of the deal, when users ask ChatGPT a question, the chatbot will deliver summaries of relevant news stories from Axel Springer brands including Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Welt. Those summaries will include material from stories that would otherwise require subscriptions to read. The summaries will cite the Axel Springer publication as the source, and also provide a link to the full article it summarizes.
The summaries will be available on ChatGPT as soon as the article has been published, so that breaking news is part of the user experience, according to Tom Rubin, OpenAI’s head of intellectual property and content. The Axel Springer content will begin appearing in the first quarter of 2024, Rubin said.
The content will get a “favorable position” in ChatGPT search results, with the goal of helping to drive traffic and subscription revenue to Axel Springer brands, according to a source familiar with the deal.
OpenAI will also pay for the Axel Springer content it uses to train the large language models that power ChatGPT. That content includes archived material, Rubin said.
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal, which is for multiple years and is not exclusive, according to Rubin.
“We want to explore the opportunities of AI empowered journalism – to bring quality, societal relevance and the business model of journalism to the next level,” said Axel Springer Chief Executive Mathias Doepfner in a statement.
The deal comes as publishers contemplate suing technology companies for violating their copyrights by using, without permission, their content to train large language models. In addition to striking deals with AI companies, they are threatening litigation over the possibility of copyright infringement and demanding to be compensated for the content used to train AI models.
AI companies, for their part, benefit from training their models on accurate, recent information, making news content a desirable source of training data. AI systems such as ChatGPT have dazzled consumers and businesses with their ability to plan vacations, summarize legal documents and write computer code.
The Axel Springer deal is the second between OpenAI and a major news publisher. In July OpenAI struck a deal with the Associated Press, in which the AP is licensing part of its archive of news stories to the Microsoft-backed tech company. The AP will gain access to OpenAI’s technology and product expertise as part of the deal, for which financial details were not disclosed. The AP deal “wasn’t about display of content,” said Rubin.
Other deals may soon follow. In November, News Corp. chief executive Robert Thomson said the company was in “advanced discussions” to strike deals on the use of its content for generative AI.
News publishers have been slow to adopt generative AI technology over concerns about its tendency to generate factually incorrect information, as well as challenges in differentiating between content produced by humans and computer programs.
Europe on Friday reached a provisional deal on landmark European Union rules governing the use of AI. The accord includes new transparency obligations for foundation models like those powering ChatGPT, including revealing what material they use to train their models. Those obligations could expose technology companies to more potential lawsuits or push them to strike deals.
Global news publisher Axel Springer partners with OpenAI in landmark deal
https://arab.news/863y8
Global news publisher Axel Springer partners with OpenAI in landmark deal
- OpenAI will pay to use Axel Springer’s content
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT will provide summaries of news stories citing Axel Springer brands as the source
OpenAI says Chinese firms try to copy US AI tech
- OpenAI’s statement came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic on Wall Street this week with its powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors
- It said rivals were using a process known as distillation in which developers creating smaller models learn from larger ones by copying their behavior and decision-making patterns
WASHINGTON: ChatGPT creator OpenAI on Wednesday said that Chinese companies are actively attempting to replicate its advanced AI models, prompting increased security measures and closer cooperation with US authorities.
OpenAI’s statement came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic on Wall Street this week with its powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors.
DeepSeek’s performance has sparked a wave of accusations that it has reverse engineered the capabilities of leading US technology, such as the AI powering ChatGPT.
OpenAI said rivals were using a process known as distillation in which developers creating smaller models learn from larger ones by copying their behavior and decision-making patterns, similar to a student learning from a teacher.
“We know (China) based companies — and others — are constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies,” an OpenAI spokesperson told AFP, highlighting tensions over AI intellectual property protection between the United States and China.
We “believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology.”
David Sacks, the new Trump administration’s AI czar, told Fox News there was “substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models.”
OpenAI said the process was against its terms of service and it would work at detecting and preventing further attempts.
The company led by Sam Altman is itself facing multiple accusations of intellectual property violations, primarily related to the use of copyrighted materials in training its generative AI models.
“Distillation will violate most terms of service, yet it’s ironic — or even hypocritical — that big tech is calling it out,” said Lutz Finger, senior visiting lecturer at Cornell University.
Copyrighted material “helped train ChatGPT, which now helps DeepSeek. Knowledge is free and hard to protect,” Finger added.
South Sudan lifts suspension of Facebook and TikTok
- Ban was imposed last week following the circulation of videos depicting the alleged killings of South Sudanese nationals in Sudan
JUBA: South Sudan authorities have lifted the temporary ban on Facebook and TikTok, which was imposed last week following the circulation of videos depicting the alleged killings of South Sudanese nationals in Sudan.
The graphic images, which sparked violent protests and retaliatory killings across the country, have been removed from the social media platforms, the National Communications Authority said in a Jan.27 letter to telecoms and Internet providers
“The rise of violence linked to social media content in South Sudan underscores the need for a balanced approach that addresses the root causes of online incitement while protecting the rights of the population,” Napoleon Adok Gai, the director of the National Communications Authority, said in the letter.
Rights groups blamed the Sudanese army and its allies for ethnically-targeted attacks on civilians in Sudan’s El Gezira state earlier this month, after they captured the state capital Wad Madani from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Sudanese army condemned what it called “individual violations,” which were captured on video and shared widely on social media.
Pakistan outlaws disinformation with 3-year jail term
- The law was rushed through the National Assembly with little warning last week
ISLAMBAD: Pakistan criminalized online disinformation on Tuesday, passing legislation that enshrines punishments of up to three years in prison, a decision journalists say is designed to crack down on dissent.
“I have heard more ‘yes’ than ‘no’, so the bill is approved,” Syedaal Khan, deputy chair of Pakistan’s Senate, said amid protest from the opposition and journalists, who walked out of the gallery.
The law targets anyone who “intentionally disseminates” information online that they have “reason to believe to be false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of fear, panic or disorder or unrest.”
The law was rushed through the National Assembly with little warning last week before being presented to the Senate on Tuesday, and will now pass to the president to be rubber stamped.
Trump says Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok
US President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a bidding war over the app.
Microsoft and TikTok did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for a comment outside regular business hours.
Trump has previously said that he was in discussions with several parties about purchasing TikTok and expects to make a decision on the app’s future within the next 30 days.
The app, which has about 170 million American users, was briefly taken offline just before a law requiring ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19.
Trump, after taking office on Jan. 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after US officials warned that there was a risk of Americans’ data being misused under ByteDance.
DeepSeek: Chinese AI firm sending shock waves through US tech
- The program has shaken up the tech industry and hit US titans including Nvidia, the AI chip juggernaut that saw nearly $600 billion of its market value erased, the most ever for one day on Wall Street
BEIJING: Chinese firm DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence chatbot has soared to the top of the Apple Store’s download charts, stunning industry insiders and analysts with its ability to match its US competitors.
The program has shaken up the tech industry and hit US titans including Nvidia, the AI chip juggernaut that saw nearly $600 billion of its market value erased, the most ever for one day on Wall Street.
Here’s what you need to know about DeepSeek:
DeepSeek was developed by a start-up based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, known for its high density of tech firms.
Available as an app or on desktop, DeepSeek can do many of the things that its Western competitors can do — write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what’s in the fridge.
It can communicate in multiple languages, though it told AFP that it was strongest in English and Chinese.
It is subject to many of the limitations seen in other Chinese-made chatbots like Baidu’s Ernie Bot — asked about leader Xi Jinping or Beijing’s policies in the western region of Xinjiang, it implored AFP to “talk about something else.”
But from writing complex code to solving difficult sums, industry insiders have been astonished by just how well DeepSeek’s abilities match the competition.
“What we’ve found is that DeepSeek... is the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,” Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, told CNBC.
That’s all the more surprising given what is known about how it was made.
In a paper detailing its development, the firm said the model was trained using only a fraction of the chips used by its Western competitors.
Analysts had long thought that the United States’ critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips — and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology — would give it the edge in the AI race.
But DeepSeek researchers said they spent only $5.6 million developing the latest iteration of their model — peanuts when compared with the billions US tech giants have poured into AI.
Shares in major tech firms in the United States and Japan have tumbled as the industry takes stock of the challenge from DeepSeek.
Chip making giant Nvidia — the world’s dominant supplier of AI hardware and software — closed down seventeen percent on Wall Street on Monday.
And Japanese firm SoftBank, a key investor in US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new $500 billion venture to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence in the United States, lost more than eight percent.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a close adviser to Trump, described it as “AI’s Sputnik moment” — a reference to the Soviet satellite launch that sparked the Cold War space race.
“DeepSeek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” he wrote on X.
Like its Western competitors Chat-GPT, Meta’s Llama and Claude, DeepSeek uses a large-language model — massive quantities of texts to train its everyday language use.
But unlike Silicon Valley rivals, which have developed proprietary LLMs, DeepSeek is open source, meaning anyone can access the app’s code, see how it works and modify it themselves.
“We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive — truly open, frontier research that empowers all,” Jim Fan, a senior research manager at Nvidia, wrote on X.
DeepSeek said it “tops the leaderboard among open-source models” — and “rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally.”
Scale AI’s Wang wrote on X that “DeepSeek is a wake up call for America.”
Beijing’s leadership has vowed to be the world leader in AI technology by 2030 and is projected to spend tens of billions in support for the industry over the next few years.
And the success of DeepSeek suggests that Chinese firms may have begun leaping the hurdles placed in their way.
Last week DeepSeek’s founder, hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, sat alongside other entrepreneurs at a symposium with Chinese Premier Li Qiang — highlighting the firm’s rapid rise.
Its viral success also sent it to the top of the trending topics on China’s X-like Weibo website Monday, with related hashtags pulling in tens of millions of views.
“This really is an example of spending a little money to do great things,” one user wrote.
