According to The New York Times, Apple is discussing licensing its news archives and using the data to train its generative artificial intelligence systems with a few major news outlets. Per the New York Times, the company has been in contact with Condé Nast, NBC News, and IAC and is reportedly debating “multiyear deals worth at least $50 million.” 
The publishers appear to have contradictory responses. The NYT believes that Apple’s use of the publishers’ content may put them “potentially on the hook for any legal liabilities that could stem from Apple’s use of their content,” and that Apple has been “vague” about its plans regarding generative AI and news. Some news executives, though, seemed to be more enthusiastic about the prospect of working with Apple. A recent report from The Information claims that Apple is spending millions of dollars every day on artificial intelligence. The company has been reported to have multiple teams working on different AI models.
Despite not receiving as much attention as competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, Apple is reportedly investing “millions of dollars a day” in AI, indicating that it is making a concerted effort to catch up. Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on improving the ability to run LLMs on phones and has recently released a machine learning framework to build models that perform well on Apple Silicon. The company is also planning AI-focused features for the upcoming major iOS release.
Apple is not the first news organization to collaborate with on AI projects; OpenAI has agreements in place with the parent company of Politico, Axel Springer, and the Associated Press to use their stories as training data for its AI models. Furthermore, Google has stated that it is developing AI-powered tools to support journalists.