Meta has finally entered the AI content licensing fray.
The platform has secured seven, multi-year AI content licensing deals with publishers, including CNN, Fox News, People Inc., USA Today Co., to incorporate their content into its large language model (LLM), Llama.
In the coming days, content from People Inc.’s new and archival content across household brand titles, including People, Better Homes and Gardens, Allrecipes, Food and Wine, will be intergated into Meta’s LLM along with new and archival content from USA Today Co. and its network of 200 local publications and sports wires.
All companies are being tight-lipped on the terms of the deals, which remain undisclosed. It’s not clear whether they are lump-sum payments à la OpenAI’s preference or the pay-per-use style adopted by the likes of Microsoft.
Meta has trailed other AI companies’ push into licensing deals, with OpenAI, Amazon, and Microsoft having all gone all in. In contrast, Meta has the fewest, having partnered with Reuters last year to use its content to answer user questions in real time about news and current events.
Now, that’s all changed, and it is a testament to just how competitive the LLM environment has become as AI companies race to own the most popular consumer LLM.
The move signals that Meta is formalizing how it accesses news content for AI training and product development, and is striking given how the company has spent the past two years distancing itself from news distribution.
This year, publishers have reported a slight return to form in terms of Facebook sending them more referral traffic this year. But having been burned before, they know better than to treat that traffic as anything other than expected volatility.
Meta has radically reorganized its AI operations under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, consolidating all its AI teams — from foundational model development to product engineering — under one roof. Publishers have previously told Digiday they believe this unit has signaled to the market a change in the company’s stance on accessing information for AI purposes.
This article will be updated.
