FT strikes deal with OpenAI | Tony Gallagher 'abolishes' Times newspaper meetings
Plus: James Harding hits out at BBC advertising plans, Paul Marshall steps back from GB News board, and David Lammy leaves LBC
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Monday 29 April, brought to you today in association with Desk-Net, the tool for planning content in fast-paced newsrooms. Track progress, allocate assignments, and integrate with your tech stack. Discover how.
The FT has become the first UK publisher to make its move and sign a deal with OpenAI.
The agreement means Financial Times journalism will be used to help train OpenAI's large language model ChatGPT, and excerpts from FT journalism will appear with attribution in ChatGPT answers.
Like Axel Springer, the Nikkei-owned publisher has decided that sometimes you need to keep your enemies closer than your friends.
The details of the deal are not known, such as how much FT content is being fed in as training data, but the FT must have come up with a formula which gives it a good amount of cash but also some control over how its content is used.
Broadly speaking, the deal is good news for other publishers because it means the LLMs accept the principle that they must pay for access to journalism. Only time will tell whether the publishers who sign up with LLMs do long-term damage to their brands by making paywalled information freely available on a rival service.
We also have a report from the House of Lords where former BBC head of news James Harding has hit out at the corporation for its plans to sell advertising on podcasts and for failing to promote many third-party programmes on its powerful BBC Sounds app. Spiked editor Tom Slater told the Lords communications committee that, like Unherd, his website has been placed on a global advertising blacklist after being flagged as “brand-unsafe”.
In a pretty rare public appearance, Times editor Tony Gallagher has revealed how his title goes after younger readers without "looking like your dad dancing". And he said The Times no longer has editorial meetings about the newspaper.
Your news diary for the week ahead includes a no-confidence vote for Scottish First Minister Hamza Yousef on either on Wednesday or Thursday — if he doesn’t resign first — and the opening of Martine Croxall's employment tribunal claim against the BBC for age discrimination.
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New from Press Gazette
FT becomes first UK newsbrand to announce licensing deal with OpenAI
The deal will mean ChatGPT users will be able to see “select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries”.
Times editor Tony Gallagher: We’ve abolished meetings about the newspaper
“We’ve got a powerful legacy print media offering in the shape of a newspaper and my concern really was that we were a print newspaper with a digital business attached to it and what we’ve tried to do over the past couple of years is make it a digital business with a newspaper attached”.
James Harding warns BBC podcast ads will ‘drain advertising away from journalism’
“I’m against it for us, I’m against it for journalism and for news, but I’m also worried about it for the BBC.”
News diary 29 April – 5 May: Martine Croxall BBC tribunal, Humza Yousaf no confidence vote, local elections
A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda this week, from the team at Foresight News.
News in brief
Labour MP David Lammy is stepping down from his weekend show on LBC ahead of the general election. He will be replaced by The News Agents co-presenter Lewis Goodall. (Press Gazette)
GB News co-lead investor Sir Paul Marshall has been replaced on the board of the broadcaster’s owner by Theodore Agnew, a former Treasury and Cabinet Office minister. (Press Gazette)
Abu Dhabi-backed Redbird IMI is reportedly preparing to formally withdraw its Telegraph bid. (Financial Times)
Parliament's International Development Committee has launched an inquiry on the future funding of BBC World Service. It is looking at the case for increased Government support after the current arrangement ends in 2025. (International Development Committee)
City University is looking for a "podcaster in residence". The 12-month residency will give an an early-career podcaster (less than five years' experience) mentoring, access to City's studios and the ability to attend its podcasting MA classes. (City University)
Taboola has launched a new product, "Taboola Select", which will allow large advertisers to target "a highly curated subset of just 15% of Taboola's most premium publishers" including the AP, Business Insider, The Independent and Daily Mirror. (Taboola)
Google's March 2024 core update finished rolling out on 19 April, although the tech platform did not announce it was done until Friday. Google said there is now "45% less low quality, unoriginal content in search results". (Search Engine Land)
Separately, Google has said it is "seeing an increase in search usage among people who use the new AI overviews" and that it plans to "expand the type of queries we can serve our users". Bauer's global head of SEO noted last week that it was "cheaper for Google to deliver a blue link to a publisher in the SERP, whereas SGE requires processing power" - but Google is now saying the costs have massively come down and it is "very confident we can manage the cost of how to serve these queries". (Search Engine Land)
A BBC science presenter's likeness was used in a £20,000 insect repellant ad campaign after an AI-synthesised copy of her voice was used to trick an ad firm into believing she had signed off on the campaign. (The Guardian)
BBC Africa and Voice of America have been taken off-air and blocked online for two weeks in Burkina Faso after the outlets covered a Human Rights Watch report alleging civilian killings by the Burkinabe army. (Committee to Protect Journalists)
Previously on Press Gazette
Is lifting of viral news from social media fuelling loss of trust in journalism?
Total Politics Group to run ad sales for Conservative Home and Labour List
Why Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner made ‘pact with the devil’ on generative AI
Former Dow Jones membership chief Suzi Watford joins Washington Post
How New York Times plans to cover Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign
Why AI-powered search from Google may NOT be disaster for publishers
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