Amazon to pay New York Times $20 million to feed company's AI

Amazon has agreed to pay at least $20 million to the New York Times Company for the right to use its journalism to feed the tech giant’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

The deal between the two companies was first announced in May but the Wall Street Journal reported the details of the payment plan on Wednesday.

As part of the agreement, the Times will allow Amazon to use editorial content from its daily journalism, NYT Cooking and The Athletic for AI-related uses.

These include plans for a real-time display of summaries and short excerpts of Times articles within Amazon products and services, such as Alexa, and training for Amazon’s proprietary foundation models, the companies said in a joint statement earlier this summer.

A payment of $20 million is a drop in the bucket for Amazon, one of the largest tech and media companies in the world with a market cap of more than $2 trillion. For the times, $20 million represents around one percent of the company’s operating budget for 2024, the Journal noted.

News of the payment comes as the Times remains in litigation with Microsoft and OpenAI over what the news outlet says is copyright infringement related to use of its content in ChatGPT. A judge ruled this spring the Times’ case against OpenAI can proceed.

Amazon was founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.