In a landmark move, The Washington Post announced a content partnership with OpenAI, making its journalism available within ChatGPT. Under this agreement, ChatGPT will surface Post content, including summaries, quotes, and links to original articles, when relevant to a user’s query. For The Post, it’s a new avenue for distribution. For OpenAI, it’s a chance to ground AI responses in credible journalism.

According to Peter Elkins-Williams, The Post’s head of global partnerships, the partnership is about “meeting readers where they are”, especially as AI platforms become more central to how people find and consume information.

But this isn’t The Post’s first AI experiment. The organization has already been testing its own generative tools like “Ask The Post” and “Climate Answers” and has developed an internal AI-powered research assistant called Haystacker. These innovations point to a newsroom that sees AI not as a threat but a tool, especially when it can help scale reach and reader experience.

A Growing Trend

The Post joins a growing number of publishers striking deals with generative AI companies. In 2023, the Associated Press became the first major outlet to license content to OpenAI. Shortly after, Axel Springer, publisher of Politico and Business Insider, inked a similar agreement. More recently, News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal, joined the fold with a “landmark” licensing deal.

And this isn’t limited to OpenAI. Google recently partnered with AP to bring real-time news updates into Gemini, its new AI-powered assistant. These deals are not only monetization strategies, but positioning moves as news organizations navigate where and how their work appears in AI contexts.

What This Means

On one hand, these partnerships promise broader reach. ChatGPT and other AI platforms engage hundreds of millions of users each week. Getting journalism in front of those users, in a context that includes links back to original articles, is potentially powerful for audience development and brand visibility.

But there are real risks. Will readers click through to the full article, or stop at the summary? Can AI platforms accurately reflect the nuance of quality reporting? And what does it mean for journalism if distribution becomes intermediated by tools publishers don’t control?

Moreover, this deal lands as major questions around copyright, ethics, and compensation remain unresolved. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft over what it calls the “unauthorized use” of its journalism to train AI models—a case that could shape the future of AI-generated content.

For journalism to survive and thrive in an AI-driven world, publishers must not only experiment but they must lead. I’ll say that again. They must lead! That means proactively shaping partnerships with technology companies, insisting on transparent attribution, and investing in their own AI infrastructure to retain editorial control.

The Washington Post–OpenAI deal is a signal moment, not a one-off. It suggests that the future of journalism isn’t a fight against AI but perhaps a strategic push to ensure journalism’s values, standards, and economics guide the evolution of these tools.