OpenAI will license news content from Axel Springer SE, the parent company of Politico and Insider, to improve its large language models.

The partnership was announced this morning. It comes a few months after OpenAI inked a similar content licensing agreement with the Associated Press.

Berlin-based Axel Springer is a media company majority owned by investment firm KKR. As part of the licensing deal announced today, OpenAI will gain access to “select news content” from several of the company’s properties including Politico and Insider as well as the German tabloids Bild and Welt. The contract covers not only free content but also certain articles that are usually only available to paid subscribers.

The companies didn’t disclose the deal’s financial terms. However, the Wall Street Journal described it as a multiyear partnership that is expected to generate “substantial revenue” for Axel Springer. The deal is said to be nonexclusive, which means the company can ink similar partnerships with other AI developers. 

OpenAI will receive the right to make Axel Springer content available to ChatGPT users. The chatbot won’t share entire articles in its responses but rather summaries. According to the Journal, ChatGPT will provide attribution and links to the articles from which it sources information.

OpenAI will also use Axel Springer’s content to train future large language models. The company is currently developing a new LLM, GPT-5, that is expected to surpass the capabilities of its flagship GPT-4 Turbo model. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman stated in November that GPT-5 will require more training data to build than the company’s earlier neural networks.

It’s unclear if OpenAI will also use the content licensed from Axel Springer to train the models developed through its Custom Models program. Launched last month, the program allows enterprises to commission custom versions of OpenAI’s models trained on different data than the commercially available versions. Training an LLM on a dataset more closely aligned with a company’s target use cases increases the quality of responses. 

“This partnership with Axel Springer will help provide people with new ways to access quality, real-time news content through our AI tools,” said OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap. “We are deeply committed to working with publishers and creators around the world and ensuring they benefit from advanced AI technology and new revenue models.”

The partnership comes six months after OpenAI inked a content licensing deal with the Associated Press. Under that contract, the AI developer will gain access to a portion of the AP’s text archive. The licensed content will be used to “improve the capabilities and usefulness of OpenAI’s systems.”

The content deals complement the company’s recently launched OpenAI Data Partnerships program, which likewise focuses on sourcing additional training data for its AI models. The program’s focus extends beyond text datasets to audio, images and videos. OpenAI is placing a particular emphasis on sourcing data that isn’t easily accessible and “expresses human intention.”

Besides enhancing its own models, the company will also use the datasets collected through the program to support the open-source AI ecosystem. OpenAI plans to release a free training dataset for building language models. Additionally, it will explore the possibility of using the database to build a collection of open-source LLMs. 

Image: Axel Springer