The news: The New York Times has agreed to license its journalism to Amazon, allowing the tech giant to incorporate Times content into its AI tools and consumer products.
- Per the Times, this includes content from NYT Cooking and The Athletic, which may appear in products like Alexa or be used to train Amazon's AI models.
- Financial terms were not disclosed, but the Times described the agreement as consistent with its principle that original reporting should be paid for.
Zooming out: This move follows a 2023 lawsuit filed by the Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of using its content without compensation, as well as a cease and desist order against Perplexity.
Meanwhile Amazon is playing catch-up in the generative AI race, having recently launched Alexa+, new foundational models, and made major investments in Anthropic.
Why it matters: This is the Times’s first agreement that explicitly centers on genAI, signaling a new willingness to work with tech companies it had previously challenged in court; the OpenAI lawsuit came out of failed negotiations for a licensing agreement.
- As AI developers increasingly rely on licensed journalism to train and improve their models, deals like this may become more common—especially as copyright lawsuits progress slowly.
- For publishers, licensing offers a revenue path beyond advertising, which has become more volatile and competitive.
- Amazon’s interest also underscores how vital trusted, high-quality data has become in differentiating AI products, especially as it lags behind firms like OpenAI and Google in consumer-facing AI adoption.
- Other major publishers—like News Corp, The Atlantic, and The Associated Press —have already signed AI content licensing agreements, suggesting that the industry is gradually coalescing around a paid-content model for AI training.
Our take: This deal signals a turning point. Instead of waiting for courts to set precedent, publishers and platforms are cutting deals that help define AI-era norms.
- For the Times, it’s a pragmatic move to assert control and secure compensation before its content is absorbed through less direct means; for Amazon, it’s a needed boost to its AI credibility.
- With only 48% of US adults trusting AI-generated news versus 62% for journalists—and an even wider gap among highly educated audiences—Amazon’s deal with the Times isn’t just about data access, but about borrowing the credibility that quality journalism provides.
- While it’s too early to tell how sustainable these deals are, they reflect a shift toward treating journalism as a valuable input—one worth paying for when the alternative is reputational and legal risk.