back to article Read AI about it... OpenAI does deal with News Corp

OpenAI and News Corp on Wednesday announced a partnership that will bring the publisher's output to the super-lab's models, marking yet another in a series of data content deals for the industry. The tie-up means that "OpenAI has permission to display content from News Corp mastheads in response to user questions and to …

  1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    Devil

    RIP ChatGPT

    The Register has asked OpenAI and News Corp to confirm whether "enhance its products" should be interpreted to mean that OpenAI intends to use News Corp material to train its models.
    I appreciate that this might have been the joke but... I can't wait to read their response. That's not what "enhance" means.

    1. HuBo Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: RIP ChatGPT

      Spot on! (following "A non e-mouse"'s clarification "For those outside the UK", down below, we're clearly not talking about the New York Times here).

  2. chuckufarley Silver badge
    FAIL

    Selling your soul...

    ...has never been so cheap.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Selling your soul...

      So cheap! $50 million a year is a bargain. Faust will be laughing in his fiery grave at the fast one the big D has pulled this time, as he awaits Murdoch arrival whereon Faust can taunt at Murdoch for eternity, singing, "He didn't even get the wishes". Who says the Devil is all bad!?

      AI is rampant in the news business. Nationals use LLMs for almost all subbing now (if not officially then by staff). It is really quick and good at headlines, subheads, captions, etc. All the stuff that takes time. Now, it's just mostly proofing its output and its quality is top-notch. Subbing desks can lose 50% of their staff now. Also, same for the Picture desk and Legal in the next 6 months. Those staff that remain have perfected prompt engineering. That is the most desirable skill in Production now.

      This is great for OpenAI cause they now have a chunk of validated and verified data which can be labelled as such. Lots of pluses for that and OpenAI will most likely earn 20 times what they paid. This should also give OpenAI access to archives that aren't online.

      There will be a TImesAI. The Reg should push for a similar deal to survive.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Selling your soul...

      Ah, Murdoch has a soul to sell does he now?

      1. Sandtitz Silver badge

        Re: Selling your soul...

        No, it's the people subscribing to News Corp products.

      2. Yorick Hunt Silver badge

        Re: Selling your soul...

        He's sucked up so many souls throughout the years, I'm sure he has a few spares lying around.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Nice words

    "Together, we are setting the foundation for a future where AI deeply respects, enhances, and upholds the standards of world-class journalism"

    Love the idea. Now all we need is to find some world-class journalism.

    News outlets today are owned by billionnaires who shape the news and the way it is broadcast. Gone are the days when the news was actual news, with facts and nothing but. Today it's all about shaping the message. Facts are carefully selected. Not everything is said, and some things are said without proper sourcing (which doesn't keep those things from being repeated).

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Nice words

      I remember at secondary school we had a couple of lessons specifically about the media and how they can easily put a filter on the story to project their own bias.

  4. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Flame

    For those outside the UK, Newscorp own two of the slimiest newspapers in the UK: News Of The World and The Sun.

    The News Of The World had to shut down after they were found to have hacked the voicemail of a dead teenager. (This caused distress and confusion as the investigation wrongly thought she was still alive)

    The Sun is infamous for being the first British newspaper to publish daily pictures of topless women (Somehow this is journalism) and also blamed the victims of the Hillsborough disaster for their own deaths. (It was later proved that Police incompetence was to blame)

    There are far more incidents of these publications having no morals.

    So if OpenAI are using Newcorp as a source for their training data, it tells you how much you should trust the output of OpenAI: Not at all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not to forget two weeks ago The Sun labelled a 14 year old boy, murdered in the street by a maniac, "sword lad". Amazingly crass "world-class journalism"

  5. xanadu42
    Facepalm

    Does this mean that ChatGPT will soon be spewing extremist content?

  6. SVD_NL Silver badge

    There are benefits to exclusive deals

    For example, if i decide on using an LLM, i can choose to use one that isn't trained on The Sun.

  7. tfewster
    Facepalm

    Mastheads?

    AKA the banner? Or article headlines? Or the article contents?

    I get that newspapers are usually desirable inputs, as they have to stick fairly close to the truth or face the consequences [YMMV*]. Unlike Reddit, where any yahoo can just make shit up with impunity.

    [World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon, Sunday Sport, 14 August 1988]

  8. Howard Sway Silver badge

    they can't be relied upon, because they may "hallucinate" – make things up

    Well, it's a good tie-up, because history has shown that The Sun also sometimes couldn't be relied on and made things up - which is why they've been sued so many times for libel. As well as having to pay damages when they lost, they then often had to publish a retraction in later issues. I doubt the AI training will link these together, so it may ingest some old stories that turned out to be libellous, and then regurgitate them as "facts". At this point, as money has changed hands for the libellous content, and it has in effect been republished, OpenAI could find itself on the end of some serious lawsuits.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cite your sources

    "The models can be trained on News Corp articles, answer queries using that info, and cite those sources."

    How do they cite those sources? This goes against everything I've read about LLMs. I don't think the models know what the source is. They are set to actively avoid regurgitating training data and I don't think they know when they are doing that. The sources are usually thousands or millions of pieces of different text, stolen from all over the internet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cite your sources

      This is what OpenAI are doing. They can create a data group of 'trusted/sourced' which is much smaller than the complete training data.

      At the moment, the LLM is comparing the generated text against most of the complete training data, which is slow, inaccurate and expensive. With a trusted model as the first layer, it is smaller, faster and cheaper.

      The trusted data model have great potential and appeal for law, finance and news/media. I think the name should be ... Plug-ins.

      https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-plugins/

  10. Omnipresent Silver badge

    Your "open ai"

    turned out to be more russian scamming. The information you are receiving is now being fed to you by putang himself:

  11. Anna Nymous
    Pirate

    Incestuous Content

    This is wonderful. I strongly encourage these types of deals, because they will speed up the collapse and degeneration of these models even quicker.

    1. Journo has content and sells it as 'certified human generated' to LLM peddler

    2. LLM scrapes content certified to be human generated and trains on it

    3. Journo uses LLM to create future content (and possibly fires all but a handful of humans)

    4. LLM scrapes content certified as human generated and degenerates one click

    5. Journo solely uses LLM to create content because who needs these pesky humans, it now only generates LLM-sourced content

    6. GOTO 4

    Computers get real dumb, REALLY fast.

    Result: both the useless journo AND the LLM snake oil peddler go out of business.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No need to worry about hallucinations with News Corp content

    It’s guaranteed

  13. Geoff (inMelbourne)

    A genuinely disturbing moment in AI

    The Murdoch media should not be used to train AI, or even used as a source of facts.

    The Murdoch media is a source of right-wing 'opinion pieces' for gullible looneys. Totally devoid of facts or balance.

    Murdoch owns FOX News and Sky After Dark, for crying out loud!

    The really disturbing question is: What is Sam Altman up to here? Why does he want to harness the angry-stupid masses of right-wing morons who believe what they read in The Australian, or the (Melbourne) Herald-SUN. What is he *really* up to? What's he going to do with that army?

    What the F*&^ is he up to?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A genuinely disturbing moment in AI

      Same kind of thing Musk is up to I guess, pushing the Overton window right and holding it there so they will vote for far right parties in elections.

      I get on well with a neighbour but he's formed a Twitter habit in the pandemic and now regularly sends me alt-right memes and links to how a far right party has all the answers. So far I've just ignored them and don't reply, but it's gotten to the point where the memes are actually repugnant but there's nothing I can do to make him break his habit.

      It's sad to see, and what's even sadder is mainstream politicians haven't a clue why it's happening and just reposition themselves more rightwards in response.

  14. druck Silver badge
    Flame

    Burn baby burn

    Bodkin argues that AI access to data needs to be democratized using distributed technologies, such as micropayments on a blockchain.

    As if burning half the planet to power AI wasn't bad enough, he wan'ts to burn the other half to power blockchain scam coins to pay for it.

  15. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    RSVP ..... SNAFU

    Non-consensual use of copyrighted content for AI training, arguably rampant throughout the machine learning world lately, isn't likely to go unnoticed anymore.

    Be assured, or extremely worried if guilty whenever/if ever charged and prosecuted or persecuted, any such non-consensual use of copyrighted content for AI training as is alienated and/or alienating has never gone unnoticed.

    Perfect memory exists with immaculate recall for the dishing out of accountability and responsibility. ..... and its passing truths can never be denied with the presentation of vast strings of clear evidence.

    :-) Regarding the issue of media and journalism entertaining hallucinations and rampant disinformation offered as non-binding aspirations trailing and trialing politically corrupt and perverse views/fantastical nonsensical news ........ and without any help at all from AI/LLLLMs ....... tune into and turn onto any popular "democratic" election campaign for an absolute feast identifying all manner of gluttons for future punishment ‽ .

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