Condé Nast has signed a multi-year deal with OpenAI, allowing the AI company to use content from its publications, such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. This partnership aims to generate revenue and ensure proper attribution for the media company’s content, amidst challenges posed by changes in traditional search engines. Details of the deal are undisclosed.
While a couple of Condé Nast employees I spoke to privately expressed concerns about the deal's potential impact on the future of their jobs and journalism in general, the trend is clear: this is new money for publishers and content creators … or is it?
Generally speaking, search engines have historically licensed content when needed (or forced). This idea is not new, but somehow this feels different. OpenAI's SearchGPT product, Google's AI Overviews, and Perplexity's AI-powered search tool don't lead directly to websites, the bots don't click on ads, and the writing on the sites is summarized (read: dumbed down). This is a generally terrible outcome for content creators and publishers. One solution: get paid to get scraped.
I'm not sure that this is a sustainable solution. No matter what the AI companies are paying, it won't be enough. What is the future of ad-supported journalism? Can subscriptions behind paywalls ever pay enough to enable the business of journalism to thrive? There are far more questions than answers here, but (for now) look for every publisher above a certain scale to make a deal. It is, metaphorically speaking, the "money is a drug" phase of the Blockbuster/Netflix path to today's dysfunctional, broken streaming model.
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ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
