OpenAI strikes licensing deal with the magazine giant behind People

Dotdash Meredith, publisher of People, Better Homes & Gardens, Investopedia, Food & Wine, and InStyle, signed a deal on Tuesday with OpenAI to use AI models for its ad-targeting product, D/Cipher. In turn, Dotdash Meredith will license its content to ChatGPT.

With the partnership, OpenAI will bring content from Dotdash Meredith publications to ChatGPT, link to the articles in the chatbot, and train AI models with its articles. (Presumably, this also includes an archive of all the previous sexiest men alive.)

Dotdash Meredith and the AI company will also collaborate on new AI features for the magazine’s readers.

Dotdash Meredith will use OpenAI’s models to upgrade D/Cipher, which helps advertisers find consumers through the content that those users look at without personal identifiers like cookies. The publisher says in a press release that OpenAI’s models will “supercharge” D/Cipher’s targeting technology as the world prepares for a cookie-less world. Dotdash Meredith plans to use AI models to make the ad product “more granular, more nuanced.”

“We have not been shy about the fact that AI platforms should pay publishers for their content and that content must be appropriately attributed,” Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel says.

Dotdash is the latest news organization to partner with OpenAI. The Financial Times inked a deal with OpenAI in April following other similar agreements from Business Insider publisher Axel Springer and The Associated Press last year.

Other news organizations have not taken to OpenAI’s licensing deals. Newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, like the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement following a similar lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year.