Apple is engaged in discussions with major players in the media industry to secure licenses for their news archives, aiming to utilize the content for training its artificial intelligence (AI) systems, as reported by The New York Times.
In pursuit of multiyear agreements exceeding $50 million, Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, is negotiating with prominent publishers including Condé Nast, NBC News, and IAC. These publishers own well-known magazines and websites like Vogue, The New Yorker, People, and The Daily Beast.
The primary objective is to leverage news content to instruct Apple’s generative AI systems. These systems employ neural networks to mimic human-like image creation and conversation. Neural networks learn from extensive datasets, such as images or text, identifying patterns through exposure to large volumes of relevant information. For instance, a neural network can be trained to recognize a cat by analyzing thousands of cat images.
Seeking to Keep Pace with Competitors
Apple is striving to catch up with rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and Meta, all of which have already introduced chatbots and other products based on generative AI. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize various industries and yield substantial revenues.
Despite Apple’s efforts, some publishers remain hesitant about the terms presented by the tech giant, finding them too broad and lacking clarity on how their news content will be employed for generative AI purposes. Conversely, others view the prospect of collaborating with Apple positively, acknowledging the company’s respectful approach in seeking permission rather than scraping content from the internet without consent, a practice some other AI firms have adopted.
The Emergence of AppleGPT
Apple is reportedly dedicating significant efforts to develop its own generative AI products, including an anticipated “AppleGPT” chatbot and new AI features for iOS 18. Apple trails behind competitors who have already integrated generative AI into their products over the past year. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has gained popularity as a chatbot trained on extensive data from books, articles, and web pages.
Nevertheless, incorporating generative AI into products comes with challenges, such as the risk of copyright infringement and the potential generation of inaccurate or misleading information. Apple aims to mitigate these issues by training its AI models on a carefully curated and reliable dataset, potentially sourced from the news archives of reputable publishers. There is also the possibility of utilizing generative AI models to enhance existing Apple applications, such as Apple News.
As disclosed by The New York Times, Apple’s executives have contemplated acquiring data specifically for generative AI products. Apple’s cautious stance on sourcing data from the internet, driven by its commitment to privacy and security, positions deals with news publishers as a viable alternative.
