Silver linings.
Priorities
Generative AI still poses existential risks to the digital media industry and many of its currently human-allotted jobs. But should AI win out as the journalism industry’s future guiding force, there might be one incredible silver lining: fringe right-wing outlets getting left in the dust.
As Semafor reports, a growing number of high-profile publishers — a list including The Associated Press, The Financial Times, Politico and Business Insider owner Axel Springer, and The Wall Street Journal and New York Post owner News Corporation — have entered deals with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to license out their libraries in exchange for cash.
While OpenAI gets high-quality content to feed its AI models, it’s unclear what publishers really get in return.
Interestingly, per Semafor, this offer isn’t on the table for everyone. So far, OpenAI’s licensing deals have centered on legacy media brands and publishers. Those getting left furthest in the cold appear to be partisan digital outlets, particularly far-right-leaning outfits like The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire, both of which confirmed to Semafor that they’ve yet to receive any licensing inquiries from OpenAI.
In short, if OpenAI does end up taking a sledgehammer to an already-fractured digital publishing economy, partisan news outfits that exist on the ideological fringes could be the ones to take the brunt of the blow.
Lamestream Media
Speaking to Semafor, Daily Caller co-founder Neil Patel admonished “left wing tech companies” for “ignoring news outlets trusted by half of America and focusing exclusively on training AI models using left leaning news sources.”
“The result,” he continued, “will of course be shockingly biased AI systems having influence and even control over many aspects of life.”
We’ve already seen conservatives — aside from Patel, that is — accusing OpenAI’s ChatGPT of “going woke,” pointing at apparent biases and flawed guardrails.
However, OpenAI’s content deal push isn’t shying away from legacy conservative media. The Murdoch family-built News Corp empire, with which OpenAI struck its most recent deal, is overwhelmingly right-leaning. (OpenAI has also reportedly been in talks to contract with the driving conservative cultural force and most-watched cable behemoth that is Fox News.)
Meanwhile, other non-legacy, left-leaning digital outlets like HuffPost or Jezebel, also don’t have million-dollar licensing deals with OpenAI. Per Semafor, OpenAI hasn’t paid nearly as much attention to copyright infringement lawsuits leveled against it by smaller digital outlets as it has to a similar suit filed by The New York Times.
In other words, at least right now, OpenAI is simply prioritizing media institutions with decades-old wells of high-quality data. Where that leaves the future of far-right-leaning publications is anybody’s guess.
More on AI and news: Newsweek Is Using AI in Its Articles
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