Financial Times Signs Licensing Deal with OpenAI to Supply Training Data and Enhance ChatGPT

The Financial Times struck a licensing deal with OpenAI in April 2024, granting ChatGPT real-time access to FT stories and access to the FT's full archive — including paywalled content — for training underlying AI models. ChatGPT users receive attributed summaries and quotes with links back to original FT articles. The FT also became a ChatGPT Enterprise customer, purchasing access for all employees. The deal is part of a broader wave of publisher-AI licensing arrangements, including FT partnerships with Microsoft Copilot and ProRata, while the New York Times took the opposite approach and sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.