Why The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today I’m talking to Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic. I was really excited to talk to Nick. Like so many media CEOs, including Vox Media’s, he just signed a deal allowing OpenAI to use The Atlantic’s vast archives as training data, but he also has a rich background in tech. Before he was the CEO of The Atlantic, Nick was the editor-in-chief of Wired, where he set his sights on AI reporting well before anyone else.

I was also really interested in asking Nick about the general sense that the AI companies are getting vastly more than they’re giving with these sorts of deals — yes, they’re paying some money, but I’ve heard from so many of you that the money might now be the point — that there’s something else going on here – that maybe allowing creativity to get commodified this way will come with a price tag so big money can never pay it back. If there is anyone who could get into it with me on that question, it’s Nick.

Links:

• Vox Media and The Atlantic sign content deals with OpenAI | The Verge
• Journalists “deeply troubled” by OpenAI’s content deals with Vox, The Atlantic | Ars Technica
• What the RIAA lawsuits mean for AI and copyright | The Verge
• Perplexity plagiarized our story about how Perplexity Is a bullshit machine | Wired
• How to stop Perplexity and save the web from bad AI | Platformer
• The text file that runs the internet | The Verge
• OpenAI, WSJ owner News Corp strike content deal valued at over $250 Million | WSJ
• The media bosses fighting back against AI — and the ones cutting deals — WashPo
• The New York Times spent $1 million so far in its OpenAI lawsuit | The Verge
• AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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