OpenAI inks deal with Condé Nast to power SearchGPT

The company says it has been actively seeking feedback from news industry partners to refine the platform and ensure it delivers accurate and relevant results.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced a multi-year partnership with Condé Nast, the global media giant.

The partnership will see content from iconic publications like Vogue, The New Yorker, and GQ integrated into OpenAI's AI-powered products including ChatGPT and its recently launched search engine, SearchGPT.

"With the introduction of our SearchGPT prototype, we're testing new search features that make finding information and reliable content sources faster and more intuitive," OpenAI said. "We're combining our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources."

OpenAI launched SearchGPT in July as a potential competitor to Google's dominance in the search engine market.

The company says it has been actively seeking feedback from news industry partners to refine the platform and ensure it delivers accurate and relevant results.

The collaboration with Condé Nast will allow SearchGPT to access a vast repository of articles, essays, and other content from renowned publications, enabling it to provide more comprehensive and informative search results.

"SearchGPT offers direct links to news stories, enabling users to easily explore more in-depth content directly from the source. We plan to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future," OpenAI noted.

Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's Chief Operating Officer, said OpenAI was committed to working closely with news publishers to ensure that AI is used responsibly and ethically.

For Condé Nast, the partnership represents a significant opportunity to generate new revenue streams and invest in its journalism.

"Over the last decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies eroded publishers' ability to monetize content, most recently with traditional search. Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors," Condé Nast's CEO Roger Lynch said.

"Throughout the process OpenAI has shown that they too are very committed to this mission. They have been transparent and willing to productively work with publishers like us so that the public can receive reliable information and news through their platforms."

The announcement comes on the heels of similar deals between OpenAI and other major media outlets, including Time Magazine, the Financial Times, and Axel Springer. In June, OpenAI and Time magazine announced a "multi-year content deal" to allow OpenAI to access more than 100 years of Time's content.

"Through this collaboration, OpenAI will gain access to current and historic content from TIME's extensive archives from the last 101 years to enhance its products and display in response to user inquiries—featuring a citation and link back to the original source on Time.com," OpenAI said at that time.

But not all media groups are interested in signing deals with AI companies.

In January, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its investor Microsoft, accusing that "millions" of its articles were used in the training of ChatGPT.

OpenAI has defended its practices, stating that it would be impossible to develop large language models like GPT-4 without access to copyrighted materials.

"Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression... it would be impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials," OpenAI said in its submission to the House of Lords communications and digital select committee earlier this year.

It further argued that limiting training data to out-of-copyright works would lead to AI systems that could not meet the needs of contemporary society.