Leaked OpenAI document reveals a partner program for publishers

  • OpenAI will introduce a new partnership program for publishers called Preferred Publisher Program, which will offer special terms of cooperation for partners that meet certain criteria.
  • The program is expected to attract publishers with financial incentives, including guaranteed payments for access to archival data and one-time payments depending on content display.
  • Program participants will receive priority placement and branding in ChatGPT, as well as new ways for users to interact with content through enhanced link and quote functionality.

OpenAI will offer news publishers partnership opportunities as part of an initiative named Preferred Publishers Program. This was reported by #AdWeek, which also interviewed several industry experts.

OpenAI has been working with premium publishers since July 2023, when it entered into a licensing agreement with Associated Press. Since then, the company has formed similar partnerships with Axel Springer, The Financial Times, Le Monde, Prisa, and Dotdash Meredith among others.

Document Details

The Preferred Publishers Program (PPP) will be available only for "selected, high-quality editorial partners", and its aim is to help ChatGPT users more easily find and interact with publishers and their content.

Furthermore, program participants will receive priority placement and a "richer representation of the publisher", and their content will feature more prominent links. Finally, within the framework of PPP, OpenAI will also offer special financial terms to such publishers.

The financial incentives available to participating publishers are divided into two categories: guaranteed and one-time payments.

Guaranteed payments are a licensing fee that OpenAI will pay the publisher for access to its archive. One-time payments will depend on the success of their content, measured by the number of users interacting with it.

Both types of payments will be combined into a single annual payment.

«The PPP program is more geared towards content scraping rather than training on it», said one of the experts interviewed. «Presumably, OpenAI has already ingested and trained on the archival data of these publishers, but it needs access to contemporary content to respond to modern queries».

In exchange for these payments, OpenAI will receive two benefits.

It will have the opportunity to train on the publisher's content and a license to display this information in ChatGPT products with attribution and links. Additionally, OpenAI will be able to declare the publisher as a privileged partner and collaborate with them in creating similar services.

Participation Increases Payments to Publishers

According to the document, publisher participation in PPP will create an enhanced user experience for OpenAI, which will help increase engagement towards browsing, i.e., queries that lead to answers with links.

Approximately 25% of ChatGPT users already use the browsing feature, but the company expects that after widespread adoption of this feature, most users will do so. If more users click on publisher links, media companies will be able to increase their rewards.

PPP participants will see their content receive a "richer expression of the brand" through enhanced functionality: a hover-branded link, anchor link, and inline insertion.

A hover-branded link is already available. OpenAI makes links to key words in its search query responses. Links appear as blue text and open a clickable tab when hovered over.

Anchor links under ChatGPT's response will load links with branded formatting under the publisher. Inline will allow inserting a quote into the ChatGPT response, which is larger in font and contains a clickable link.

At first, it seems that the new functionality will generate traffic to the publisher's site. In reality, most likely, users will receive answers to their questions in ChatGPT without any interaction with the publisher.

A recent experiment by The Atlantic showed that if a search engine, like Google, integrated artificial intelligence into its #search, users would be satisfied with the system's answers 75% of the time, without visiting the publisher's site.

What Publishers Should Do

While some publishers have chosen to collaborate with OpenAI, others, including a recent participant at NewFronts The New York Times and eight publications from Alden Global Capital, have sued OpenAI on the basis that it used copyrighted articles without permission. However, the vast majority of news publishers, as well as independent websites, have neither collaborated with OpenAI nor sued.

«At the recent Aspen Conference in New York, dedicated to #AI and news», one expert said, «OpenAI openly stated its need to attract publishers to participate in its partnership program».

For Publishers

Small publishers, especially in Russia, will get nothing. They are already suffering from yet another closed service.

Forecast

Experiments with AI, wizards with answers, and the like will make traffic from search even less. And this is happening not tomorrow, but today.

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