OpenAI’s chief of intellectual property and content has praised the “stunning results” of the past year of experimentation with AI technology in the news industry.
Tom Rubin also alluded to initial signals that news is popular on ChatGPT search but did not yet share any data – although SEO consultant Barry Adams separately told publishers at the conference not to be worried about AI chatbots including ChatGPT stealing traffic.
Rubin also took a potshot at the legacy model for search of Google’s “ten blue links”.
He was speaking for the second year running at WAN-IFRA’s World News Media Congress, held in Krakow on Tuesday.
Describing the shift in how users find information, he said: “Users increasingly like answers to be delivered quickly in a conversational and context-aware manner as opposed to the traditional land of an inefficient list of ten blue links.
“Consumers know that they can use natural language to get a better answer and go deeper into their particular interest. Tools like ChatGPT, which now has over 500 million weekly active users, are becoming part of their daily lives.”
ChatGPT now has 20 million paying users. Its total weekly usage is now five times bigger than this time one year ago.
ChatGPT’s search tool began rolling out on its website and in its apps in October and by February it was available to all paid and free users in regions where ChatGPT is available. Shopping features including personalised product recommendations were added last week.
OpenAI has signed deals with over a dozen major news and magazine publishers including News Corp, The Guardian, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Dotdash Meredith, Conde Nast, Hearst, Future, Le Monde, The Atlantic, Vox Media, Time, Axios and Schibsted.
The partnerships generally cover how the publisher’s content would be displayed in ChatGPT as well as the use of OpenAI tech. Citations tend to appear as names of websites at the end of paragraphs with an expandable “sources” section at the bottom of the answer.
