OpenAI and Microsoft are funding projects to bring more AI tools to newsrooms. The pair will award grants of up to $10 million to Chicago Public Media, the Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday (Long Island, New York), the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Seattle Times. Each publication will hire a two-year AI fellow to develop projects to improve technology adoption and business sustainability. Three additional retailers will receive fellowship grants in the second round.
OpenAI and Microsoft are each contributing $2.5 million in direct funding and $2.5 million in software and enterprise credits. The Lenfest Institute for Journalism is collaborating with OpenAI and Microsoft on this project and announced the news today.
So far, the relationship between journalism and AI has mostly ranged from questionable to litigious. OpenAI and Microsoft are being sued by the Center for Investigative Reporting, The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet. Some publications accused ChatGPT of plagiarizing articles, while other lawsuits centered on scraping web content without permission or compensation to train AI models. Other media outlets chose to negotiate. Condé Nast is one of the latest companies to sign a deal with OpenAI for content rights.
In a separate development, OpenAI has hired Aaron Chatterji as its first chief economist. Chatterjee is a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and served on President Barack Obama’s economic advisory board and President Joe Biden’s Commerce Department.
