OpenAI Strikes Content Licensing Deal with Financial Times; Google Seeks to Throw Out Antitrust Case

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 30th Apr 2024 in News

On today’s news digest: OpenAI Strikes Content Licensing Deal with Financial Times; Google Seeks to Throw Out Antitrust Case; Alphabet Reports Q1 Financial Results

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, has struck a content licensing deal with the UK’s Financial Times. Through the partnership, the publisher will licence its material to the AI company to be used for the training of its AI models. The deal also allows ChatGPT to respond to questions with short summaries of articles published by the Financial Times (linked back to the publisher’s website). This deal follows legal disputes between OpenAI and other publishers/authors over copyright infringement, such as The New York Times, which sued the AI company for allegedly using its content without permission/remuneration.

In the legal landscape, Google has attempted to throw out an antitrust case it’s due to face trial for. The tech giant asked a judge to throw out the Justice Department’s lawsuit which accuses it of monopolising the tech used to buy and sell online advertising. The antitrust enforcers allege that Google’s dominance over ad tech allows it to keep at least a third of every dollar spent by advertisers through its online advertising tools, and that it favours its own advertising tools by abusing access to information on rival bids for ad space. Google argues that a market was fabricated by antitrust enforcers for the litigation. In its motion seeking summary judgement (which effectively would end the case without the need for a trial), Google stated: “There can be no serious claim that ad placement on mobile apps and social media should be excluded in market share calculations”.

Meanwhile, Alphabet – parent of Google, reported strong financial results for Q1, with revenues reaching $80.5bn (£64.25bn). Its performance was driven by revenue gained through Search ($46.16bn ≈ £36.83bn), YouTube ($8.1bn ≈ £6.46bn), and Cloud ($9.6bn ≈ $7.7bn). Its Services revenues grew by just under a quarter year-over-year.