Leaked Information Sheds Light on OpenAI's Preferred Publisher Program

OpenAI, the generative artificial intelligence firm, has been proposing partnership opportunities to news publishers through an initiative called the Preferred Publishers Program (PPP), according to documents obtained by ADWEEK and interviews with industry executives.

OpenAI’s Preferred Publisher Program

The PPP is reportedly only available to select high-quality editorial partners. Its purpose is to help ChatGPT users more easily discover and engage with publishers’ brands and content. Members of the program receive priority placement and “richer brand expression” in chat conversations, and their content benefits from more prominent link treatments.

Through the PPP, OpenAI also offers financial terms to publishers. The financial incentives that participating publishers can expect to receive are grouped into two categories: guaranteed value and variable value.

Guaranteed value is a payment that compensates the publisher for allowing OpenAI to access its backlog of data, while variable value depends on display success, a metric based on the number of users engaging with linked or displayed content.

The Benefits to OpenAI

In return for these payments, OpenAI would gain two benefits. First, it would have the ability to train on a publisher’s content and the license to display that information in ChatGPT products, complete with attribution and links.

Second, it would get to announce the publisher as a preferred partner and work with them to build out these experiences.

Impact on User Experience and Publisher Payouts

The pitch deck suggests that publisher participation in PPP creates a better experience for OpenAI users, which will help shift engagement toward browsing, i.e., queries that result in responses with links. If more users engage with publishers’ links, the media companies could earn larger payments for their variable value.

Complicated Relationship Between OpenAI and Digital Publishers

The details of the program add further color to the complicated relationship between digital publishers and OpenAI. The uncertain legal standing of the data-scraping methodology that OpenAI uses to power its large-language models has made licensing negotiations between the two parties complex.

While some publishers have opted to partner with OpenAI, others, including The New York Times and eight Alden Global Capital titles, have sued the tech firm on the grounds that it has used copyrighted articles without permission.

However, the majority of news publishers and independent websites have neither partnered with OpenAI nor taken legal action. According to one media executive, OpenAI is attempting to change that through programs such as the Preferred Publisher Program.