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French artificial intelligence startup Mistral has struck a multimillion-dollar deal with Agence France-Presse to feed thousands of news articles into its chatbot. .
The partnership between AFP, one of the world’s oldest news agencies, and Mistral is a first for the two Paris-based companies at a time when many media groups are deciding whether to sign licensing deals with AI companies or take copyright legal action against them. Violation.
The contract announced Thursday will feed more than 2,000. AFP Daily news articles in six languages feed into Mistral’s chatbot, which allows chat users to answer questions and edit documents.
“It’s important to have agreements like this to get well-founded information on verified content,” Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s founder and CEO, told the Financial Times.
The companies said the agreement is to ensure that the Mistral chatbot is based on proven data. It’s coming as Meta and Elon Musk X pulls back on content moderation and He declared the primacy of freedom of speechas the inauguration of US President Donald Trump approaches.
“What it tells us is that Europe needs to be united to defend its advanced technology sector,” Mensch said of recent moves by Silicon Valley rivals.
“’Free speech’ is being heavily weaponized in Europe and this is offensive to Big Tech. European regulation” AFP chief executive Fabrice Freis told the FT. “It’s precisely this kind of deal that, in its current state, represents an AI player betting on independent, fact-based professional journalism.”
On Wednesday, Google announced a similar deal with the Associated Press, a longtime partner on the search engine, to display news feeds through its Gemini AI app.
Mistral raised €600mn New funding At a valuation of €6bn in June last year, it is Europe’s leading AI company and the continent’s only startup working on large-scale language models, rivaling the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI.
Mensch Mistral offers a partnership model that is “more open” and “equally shares the value” than its US competitors.
Fries said AFP has discussed licensing deals with several. AI In recent months, companies have said, “But it’s only with Mistral that we feel it’s not just a sales agreement, it’s a real partnership.
The commercial terms of the multi-year Mistral-AFP deal have not been disclosed. But unlike similar deals between US-based OpenAI and other media groups, Fries said the deal is “not a one-time deal” for data on which large language models are trained.
OpenAI has entered into content agreements with Xena Corp., Axel Springer, and the Financial Times. On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based group led by Sam Altman said it will offer four new local U.S. news divisions to online publisher Axios, the results of which will feed into ChatGPT.
Fries said that dealing with AI companies is “still an open battle” and that he is closely monitoring the US legal case between OpenAI and The New York Times over claims of copyright infringement. Publishers to AI model groups.
For AFP, the deal with Mistral represents an opportunity to make up for lost revenue when its fact-checking contract with Meta falls through.
The US social media group said last week it plans to switch to community-based fact-checking in the US. Fries said AFP has 150 journalists working on fact-checking for Meta.
AFP It expects 20 million euros in revenue from technology platforms by 2024, including deals with platforms such as Meta Likes and content licensing deals with Google, accounting for 10 percent of last year’s business revenue.
“Now obviously this pocket of revenue that has helped us grow and show profits over the last seven years is at risk,” Freries said. “We need to look for new technology players as a source of revenue and AI players can be a substitute for platforms.”
