Meta's on-and-off relationship with news publishers is apparently back on track, with the company announcing a new agreement that will allow several major news providers to use Meta's content to power real-time queries within Meta's AI chatbot.
So after years of saying it doesn't need news and refusing to pay publishers access fees, Meta probably needs news again.
According to Meta:
“We're starting to offer a wider range of real-time content on Meta AI, from global and breaking news to entertainment and lifestyle articles. Meta AI When you ask a news-related question, you receive information and links from a wider variety of content sources, helping you find timely and relevant content tailored to your interests. ”
This is a key advantage that X touts with its Grok chatbot, which means that Grok ingests X's posts in real-time and can provide up-to-date responses and information, as opposed to other AI bots that don't have access to the same.
OpenAI is at the biggest disadvantage in this regard. Because OpenAI doesn't have social networks or other data pools, ChatGPT can't answer queries about the latest news events. OpenAI is looking to build its own social network to address this, as well as establishing its own agreements with publishers.
And as more publishers realize the value of their data and lock it down for this purpose, data is becoming a new source of revenue for providers through licensing agreements that provide access to platforms and facilitate real-time insights.
That's what Meta is looking to leverage with this deal.
“These integrations allow us to provide value to our partners and reach new audiences by making it easier to access information with links to articles and the ability to visit these partners’ websites to learn more.”
Once again, Meta is trying to get along with publishers, even though they've been saying for years that they don't actually need them at all and won't pay access fees after breaking past deals.
This is an ongoing dance, but the meta never seems to strike the right balance.
So, will it work this time?
Well, the truth is that Meta's approach to news content is completely transactional. If it was in Meta's interest to do so at this point, they would be friends with publishers, but the moment Meta changes its mind and no longer considers this a priority, Meta will remove publishers and those who have relied on that platform will be left holding the bag. We've seen time and time again that Meta's emphasis on video and push for publishers to create content for Facebook TV results in a shift in priorities and, as a result, providers are forced to lay off their video creation teams.
Meta also gave publishers access to their audience, then restricted it (many times) and forced them to pay for advertising, while sometimes offering greater reach through projects like the independent news tab, which it has since discontinued as well.
The lesson publishers have learned is that they cannot rely on Facebook in any way and assume that the benefits generated by the platform will be permanent. This makes it difficult to build a business, but at the same time Meta company logically only considers the bottom line, so it never makes decisions based on the benefit for its partners.
This may be a short-sighted approach given its history of media partnerships, but then again, Meta's business continues to grow and from its own perspective it's clearly doing the right thing. All you do is annoy your publishing partners in the process.
That likely means CNN, Fox News, Le Monde Group, The Washington Examiner, USA TODAY and many other publishing partners have signed up for the new program, and these new publishing partners will take a cautious approach.
So while Meta AI has more up-to-date insights, Meta also has more text input to train its AI models. This will improve Meta AI by providing better information throughout the system, while also potentially highlighting how other publishers can monetize Meta's focus on AI development.
But how long will it be before Meta thinks that, for example, thread data can be used for the same information and insights? How long will these agreements last before meta changes are reflected?
This is an interesting development, but there's no doubt that none of these publishers are planning a long-term future for continued meta payments for such things.
