The news: Amazon will pay The New York Times between $20 million and $25 million annually in a multiyear content licensing agreement that was announced in May. This amount, close to 1% of the Times’ total annual revenues, is one of the largest disclosed payments for news content licensing for generative AI (genAI) training.

The Times said the agreement proves premium journalism deserves compensation, per The Wall Street Journal.

What about The Washington Post? Although it’s owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and signed a search content deal with OpenAI in April, it has no current ties to Amazon’s AI training efforts—a detail that may help deflect antitrust scrutiny.

A big payoff for Amazon: The Big Tech monolith can use the Times’ content to train its proprietary genAI models. Summaries and short excerpts of Times content will be featured in Amazon products and services, such as Alexa smart speakers, enhancing user queries and responses with timely, high-quality journalism.

Amazon, seen as playing catch-up in the AI race, also signed multiyear agreements with Condé Nast and Hearst in July, specifically to power its AI shopping assistant Rufus, per Digiday.

Our take: The Amazon–Times deal underscores the growing value of premium journalism in the AI era, setting a precedent for how tech companies can ethically license high-quality content. 

Amazon looks like the big winner in this deal—it secures a reputable content pipeline for its consumer-facing AI product and can ride on the clout and cachet of its content partners.