It looks like the big tech giants are getting competitive over content licensing deals. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spilled the beans in their antitrust case against Google, saying Google is locking up a ton of agreements with publishers and content providers.
Nadella claims Google is trying to control all the information out there that trains AI models. These massive language models need huge amounts of data from all over the web to learn. And Google wants dibs on licensing that data through deals with its own YouTube as well as other sites and companies.
This is still early days apparently. But Nadella warns if Google gets too cozy with content makers, it’ll be tough for Microsoft and other companies to compete. Their future AI’s like Gemini will be just as hungry for all kinds of training material like text, images, videos and audio.
Nadella drew parallels to back in the early internet when Google would throw money at phone makers to be the default search engine. Now Google may be taking a similar approach to lock up exclusive licensing on content for its AI models. Which is part of what the antitrust case is all about.
With Google’s search dominance and advertising clout, Nadella says they’ve got an easier time convincing publishers and such to only deal with them. And Microsoft wants in on the action too – they’re happy to invest big bucks in training AI. But not if Google is hogging all the good data deals.
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Other tech companies like Adobe and OpenAI have already started inking image licensing agreements with stock photo providers. Major news outlets are also chatting with AI labs about allowing their articles and reports to be used. After all, their journalism is valuable too.
So in summary, the tech titans are battling over the crucial fuel needed to advance AI – and that comes in the form of content from all over the web. It’ll be interesting to see how this licensing scrap plays out!
