The deal is good news for the FT and perhaps an inspiration for other large news media interested in striking a deal for incremental additional revenue.
Past research suggests that AI companies could run out of training data by 2026, while a study led by the late University of Cambridge researcher Ross Anderson warned that in the absence of high-quality human-generated training data, LLMs could experience 'model collapse.'
The FT news also comes at a time when AI companies are dealing with a litany of legal issues around their training data. Just this week, eight newspapers owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using their content in training data.