By Sara Guaglione * June 2, 2025 *
Ivy Liu (19659004]It’s finally happened: The New York Times has signed an AI licensing agreement. Amazon, not Perplexity or Google – and certainly not OpenAI or Microsoft – is the company that has signed an AI licensing deal.
This agreement will allow Amazon products like Alexa speakers to use summaries and excerpts from NYT articles and recipes as well as incorporate this content into the training of their proprietary AI models.
This is a sign that the times are changing: The New York Times has indicated it’s open to a licensing agreement for AI if the terms and conditions are right.
This deal, announced by NYT on Thursday, is similar to Amazon and the publisher declaring that they are also all-in in the AI race.
The New York Times signals to other AI tech firms, “We’re ready to be at the table if you want to come to the tables,” a former NYT executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Digiday. “Until [this] announced, they were sort of hiding in shadows. Now they are saying, “we’re open to business under the right conditions.”
This same executive said that they believe the deal with Amazon represents the beginning of a new wave of deals between large digital publishing companies and AI licensing deals. Digiday has learned that at least another publisher signed a licensing agreement with Amazon last year and that there will be more in the months to come. Amazon has kept its discussions with publishers secret.
Amazon is courting news publishers to form AI licensing partnerships that will feed quality content into an improved version of Alexa. first reported last December. Alexa can answer news queries from Reuters, Associated Press, and The Wall Street Journal but not in real-time.
However, The New York Times announcement was vague as to whether its content will help power the new Alexa+. The article read: “Amazon could use editorial content from The Times to power the Alexa software on its smart speakers.”
What made NYT choose Amazon?
The New York Times content will be used by Amazon to train its AI models. This could strengthen OpenAI’s copyright case. Aaron Rubin, a partner in the Strategic Transactions & Licensing Group at Gunderson Dettmer’s law firm, said that it implies that using content without a contract in place “may be a unfair use.”
It also establishes the fact that there is a market to license this content for model-training purposes. Anyone who trains their model without licensing it, undercuts that market,” said he.
The New York Times refused to answer questions regarding the differences between their different associations with OpenAI, and Amazon. They also declined to explain why they would sign up with Amazon and then sue OpenAI. Amazon declined to comment.
Amazon might seem an unlikely partner for The New York Times’ first AI licensing agreement. The New York Times has a growing digital advertising and subscription business that puts it in a class of its own. Amazon’s large-language model Nova isn’t exactly a household brand – at least not in the same league as OpenAI’s GPT or Google’s Gemini. (Amazon Anthropic has invested $8 billion (19459024]into the company.
Without more details, it’s difficult to say for certain. Amazon’s AI models are primarily used for voice products such as Alexa and its Amazon Shopping Assistant Rufus, not text-based search products like Google’s or OpenAI’s, according to a publishing executive at a large online publisher who requested anonymity. They said that Google’s AI Mode and ChatGPT are “both more likely to cannibalize the material traffic” for The New York Times. The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft. A partnership with those companies would have been a one-eighty. Perplexity has been actively seeking deals with publishers. But for a wider variety of publishers. For example, its revenue-share agreements with Time to Blavity.
Google could have been a good AI licensing partner for The New York Times given its expertise in AI. The Associated Press and The New York Times have already made agreements in January to work together. Bring your news to Google Gemini’s chatbot
The New York Times doesn’t seem to be the only publisher who offers a carrot and a stick. News Corp signed a license deal with OpenAI on May 20, 2024. News Corp’s Dow Jones and New York Post businesses sued Perplexity five months later.
Robert Thomson, News Corp’s CEO, said in a November 2024 earnings call that the company would seek to “challenge AI companies who misuse and abuse our trusted journalism.” “Perplexity… sells products based on the journalism we produce, and we’re preparing to take further action against companies that have ingested and synthesized our intellectual property.” News Corp didn’t respond to a comment request before publication.
The New York Times has now been removed from the list of large digital publishers who have not yet signed an AI licensing agreement. Bustle Digital Group is one of many. CNN, Bloomberg and CNN are others.
I think the bigger picture is everyone’s ready to do business at the right cost. Brian Wieser is the principal at Madison and Wall. Jessica Davies contributed to the reporting.
https://digiday.com/?p=579790
