Many technology companies have signed their first AI content licensing deals with publishers in 2025. New entrants in the space mean more deals are likely to be signed in 2026, as publishers look for ways to monetize content used to train AI systems.
Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have all signed licensing deals with publishers in the past six months.
Digiday tracked all major AI content licensing deals between tech companies and publishers in a 2024 roundup. We will do the same in 2025. These agreements typically allow tech companies to use the publisher's content to train language models at scale, often including paywalled content. In return, publishers will get attribution for content that appears on AI chatbots and search platforms, and will have access to technology that publishers can use to build AI-powered products and features.
It would be remiss not to mention the number of lawsuits publishers have filed against tech companies for copyright infringement. Some notable ones include the New York Times and Chicago Tribune suing Perplexity for copyright infringement in December. Penske Media Corporation sued Google in September over AI summarization, marking the first time Google has been challenged in court by a major U.S. publisher over AI search.
2025 began with agreements between Axios and OpenAI, The Associated Press and Google, and ended with new deals with Microsoft and Meta.
Below is a chronological list of all major agreements between publishers and AI technology companies in 2025.
January 15: Axios and OpenAI
Axios signs 3-year agreement with OpenAI. Publisher content, along with sources and links to the Axios site, is used to answer ChatGPT users' questions. Axios is also building its own AI products using OpenAI technology.
As part of the deal, OpenAI provided Axios with funding to open four local newsrooms in Pittsburgh. Kansas City, Missouri. Boulder, Colorado. and Huntsville, Alabama. This is the first time OpenAI has funded a newsroom as part of a deal with a publisher.
January 16: AP and Google
Google has signed its first AI content licensing agreement with the Associated Press. The deal will see AP's real-time news information displayed on Google's Gemini chatbot.
January 16th: AFP News and Mistral News
French AI company Mistral has signed a multi-year agreement with Agence France-Presse (AFP). Mistral's AI assistant, Le Chat, now has access to 2,300 text articles in six languages produced by Agence France-Presse every day. The agreement was reached after “months of in-depth discussions between the two companies,” AFP said in a statement.
February 12: Schibsted Media and OpenAI
Norway-based news publisher Schibsted Media has signed an agreement with OpenAI to allow the AI company to access and cite news in AI-generated summaries. Schibsted Media will be able to leverage OpenAI's insights and access its new technology.
February 14: Guardian and OpenAI
The Guardian has signed an AI content licensing agreement with OpenAI. OpenAI will acquire content from The Guardian and agree to attribute summaries and article excerpts from publishers, but The Guardian may use OpenAI technology to develop new products and features.
March 26th: News/Media Alliances and Prorations
Industry group News/Media Alliance announced a deal with AI startup Prorata. The agreement allows members to choose to license content for use in AI-generated responses to prompts in Gist.ai products on a 50% revenue share model.
April 22: Washington Post and OpenAI
The Washington Post signs its first AI content licensing agreement with OpenAI. This allows ChatGPT to display links to summaries, quotes, and reports of posts depending on the relevant question. In particular, there is no mention of using The Post's content for OpenAI's LLM training.
May 29: New York Times and Amazon
The New York Times signs its first AI content licensing agreement with Amazon. The deal will allow Amazon products such as Alexa speakers to use summaries and short excerpts from NYT articles and recipes, allowing them to incorporate this content into training their own AI models.
June 6th: 500 publishers and pro rata distribution
Prorata announced content licensing agreements with more than 500 publishers to power its AI search engine Gist.ai.
July 15: Condé Nast, Hearst, Amazon
Condé Nast and Hearst have signed multi-year deals with Amazon to license their content for use in Rufus, the company's AI shopping assistant.
July 30: USA Today Co. and Perplexity
USA Today Co. (formerly Gannett) has signed its first large-scale AI licensing deal and joined Perplexity's Publisher Program. Content from over 200 local publications will be integrated into Perplexity's AI-powered search experience, including Comet, an AI-powered web browser.
October 30: USA Today Co and Microsoft
USA Today Co. announced it will join Microsoft's yet-to-be-launched AI content marketplace. This marketplace is being developed to reward publishers for the use of their content by AI companies and products. Microsoft's Copilot assistant will be the first purchaser.
November 1: AP and Microsoft
The Associated Press will join Microsoft's pay-as-you-go AI content marketplace.
“I would characterize this as very early and experimental. But we want to have a seat at that table. We want to be able to speak up and disagree when we need to disagree, not just in terms of representing The Associated Press, but in terms of representing our broader customer base in these conversations. That's very important to us,” Kristin Heitman, global chief revenue officer at The Associated Press, told Digiday.
November 4: People Inc and Microsoft
People Inc. signs second AI licensing agreement with Microsoft. Last year, it agreed to a deal with OpenAI.
During a Nov. 4 earnings call, People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel described Microsoft's Marketplace as an “a la carte,” pay-as-you-go model, as opposed to the “all you can eat” blanket deal the company has with AI rival OpenAI. “We're very happy with both models. As long as our content is respected and paid for, either model is viable,” Vogel said.
December 5th: 7 publishers and meta
Meta has signed multi-year AI content licensing agreements with seven publishers, including CNN, Fox News, People Inc., and USA Today Co., and is incorporating that content into its large-scale language model, Llama. This is the first time Meta has participated in an AI content licensing competition with a publisher.
December 10: Various publishers and Google
Google announced an AI pilot partnership program with news publishers including Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Post. This will allow tech companies to expand access to publisher content and test new features in Google News, including AI-powered article summaries on participating publishers' Google News pages. Google will compensate participating publishers.
