OpenAI swoops up French and Spanish news partners for AI chatbot training

OpenAI is partnering with Le Monde and Prisa Media to provide French and Spanish news content to ChatGPT, aiming to improve user access to real-time information and enhance the training of its large language models.

OpenAI continues to expand its partnerships in the media and entertainment industry with the announcement of new collaborations with French newspaper Le Monde and Spanish media company Prisa Media.

On March 13, the ChatGPT developer revealed the partnerships, saying it would help bring news content in French and Spanish to deliver “real-time, authoritative information to users” of its chatbot and contribute to model training.

Along with Le Monde and Prisa Media, OpenAI said it has also created partnerships with Spanish-language media El País, Cinco Días, As and El Huffpost.

Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer of OpenAI, said the firm is dedicated to supporting journalism and will apply new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help enhance opportunities for content creators. This means that, in the coming months, users will be able to interact with up-to-date news content from these publishers via summaries with attribution and “enhanced links to the original articles.”

Le Monde is France’s leading newspaper, with millions of readers per day. Prisa Media’s audience extends across Spain, Latin America and the United States. 

Carlos Nuñez, the chairman and CEO of Prisa Media, called the partnership a way to open up “new avenues” for audience engagement, adding:

“Leveraging ChatGPT’s capabilities allows us to present our in-depth, quality journalism in novel ways, reaching individuals who seek credible and independent content.”

Related: AI-generated news anchors to present personalized reports on Channel 1 AI in 2024

These partnerships follow similar moves from OpenAI in recent months. In December 2023, the company partnered with German media giant Axel Springer. 

Similarly, the collaboration entailed using content from the media house to push forward the training of OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs), with the goal of better, more up-to-date content for users and further transparency through attributing and linking full articles.

At the beginning of 2024, OpenAI also revealed that it was in talks with major media companies in the U.S., including CNN, Fox and Time, to secure news content licensing. It has also partnered with the American Journalism Project to support innovative local news initiatives, as well as with the Associated Press, which also contributes to LLM training. 

Despite inking these partnerships, media companies themselves have been grappling with AI in other ways, including combating fake news and deepfakes and ensuring their copyrighted materials are protected.

The New York Times opened a lawsuit against OpenAI in December 2023, alleging the unauthorized use of millions of NYT articles to train chatbots that provide information to users.

The lawsuit is still ongoing despite efforts on both sides to dismiss the claims of the other.