Under the partnership, Microsoft will pay Semafor to fund a breaking news feed called “Signals.” The companies did not disclose specific figures, but a source said the amount was “significant” to Semafor’s business.
Microsoft office building in New York City. Photo: UCG
Signals not only provides a breaking news feed but also analysis on major topics, with about a dozen posts per day. The goal is to present diverse perspectives from around the world - a key focus for Semafor since its launch in 2022.
Semafor co-founder Ben Smith stressed that Signals will be written entirely by journalists, with artificial intelligence serving as a research tool to inform the posts.
The partnership comes as the tech giant faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the New York Times. In December, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, seeking billions of dollars in damages, alleging that the tech companies “abused” millions of their articles to build artificial intelligence chatbots.
Microsoft is also set to announce partnerships with news organizations including the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the Online News Association and the GroundTruth Project on Monday.
The partnership comes amid growing concerns among media companies about artificial intelligence and its potential threat to their businesses. News publishers are grappling with how to use AI to improve their work and stay ahead of the technology, and are concerned that they could lose traffic and therefore revenue to AI chatbots — software that can generate human-like text and information in seconds.
For a breaking news event, Semafor journalists will use AI tools to quickly search for news and commentary from other news sources around the world in multiple languages. For example, a Signals post might include views from Chinese, Indian, or Russian media. Semafor reporters will use that to summarize the different perspectives and cite sources.
Noreen Gillespie, a former Associated Press journalist who joined Microsoft three months ago to build relationships with news companies, said: “Journalists need to adopt these tools to survive and thrive for another generation.”
Semafor is a news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, former BuzzFeed editor, and Justin Smith, former CEO of Bloomberg Media. Semafor is free to access and is funded by wealthy individuals, including 3G Capital founder Jorge Paulo Lemann and KKR co-founder Henry Kravis.
The company is on track to generate more than $10 million in revenue by 2023 and has more than 500,000 free newsletter signups. Semafor is “very close to profitability” by the fourth quarter of 2023, Justin Smith said.
Hoai Phuong (according to FT)
Source
Comment (0)