This is why Twitter owner Elon Musk just began throttling accounts which consume a massive amount of content on a daily basis – as it became a free and valuable resource for engineers.

It's also why AI can be "woke" – as it all depends on the data it's being trained on, which as we've seen, can bias the chatbot towards the political ideology of its creators (for which loopholes were quickly discovered).

Now, the Financial Times reports that the world's largest tech companies are negotiating with major media outlets to strike landmark deals for the use of news content to train AI chatbots.

These people said that publishers including News Corp, Axel Springer, The New York Times and The Guardian have each been in discussions with at least one of the tech companies.

Those involved in the discussions, which remain in the early stages, added that the deals could involve media organisations being paid a subscription-style fee for their content in order to develop the technology underpinning chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

The talks come as media groups express concern over the threat to the industry posed by the rise of AI, as well as fears over the use of their content by OpenAI and Google without deals in place. Some companies such as Stability AI and OpenAI are facing legal action from artists, photo agencies and coders, who allege contractual and copyright infringement. -FT