The AI boom has created a mini-economy of content repositories that AI companies want access to to train their models.
Companies like OpenAI initially trained their models by collecting data from the Internet. However, with legal looming over copyright, companies are looking to secure deals to formally license content in the future. Apple is one such participant. Reuters reports that Apple has reached a deal to license millions of images owned by Shutterstock, a stock image site.
The deal was likely valued at is $25–50 million. The agreement was reportedly signed a few months after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Several other major tech companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon, appear to have struck similar deals with Shutterstock.
It was previously reported that Apple was in talks with news publishers to license their articles to train its artificial intelligence models. intelligence.
To show how important content acquisition has become for AI, the New York Times today claims that Meta has even discussed buying out book publishers like Simon & Schuster.
Although Apple has been seen as a bit of a laggard in the recent AI hype, the company hopes to change that perception soon. iOS 18 is expected to come with artificial intelligence features that will improve the experience for iPhone users. iOS 18 will be officially announced at WWDC, with the keynote starting at 10:00 a.m. PT on June 10th.
Apple Chief Marketing Officer Greg Jozwiak has already confirmed the AI speculation in his tweet about the event. He said that WWDC will beabsolutely incredible.
