OpenAI struck a licensing deal with the Financial Times (FT) to use its content to train ChatGPT to answer questions and provide summaries of news articles.

The two companies also agreed to collaborate on developing AI products and features for the newspaper’s readers. Financial terms and the length of the partnership were not disclosed.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI is in hot pursuit of forging partnerships with media outlets to expand its presence across the sector. Bloomberg reported it has similar arrangements in place with the Associated Press and multinational media company Alex Springer.

Earlier this year, the FT became a customer of ChatGPT Enterprise, which gave employees access to OpenAI’s tools.

FT Group CEO John Ridding stated the agreement “recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI”.

He also emphasises that FT “is committed to human journalism” in a move indicating it won’t use AI to generate stories.

AI large language models need to ingest large volumes of data to train their generative AI chatbots, but there’s concern about the lack of clarity on which source code or open language is being used as information is gathered.

A group of US authors sued OpenAI in September 2023 over alleged copyright infringement for using their novels to train its models.