Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has reached deals to pay Fox News, CNN and several other news publishers in exchange for using their articles in its AI chatbot, the company said Friday.
The tech giant said the partnerships will give users more access to “real-time content” in the form of links to articles and websites when they submit queries to its AI tools.
In addition to CNN and Fox News, Meta struck agreements with Fox Sports, Le Monde Group, People, the Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, USA Today and the USA Today Network, the company said.
“When you ask Meta AI news-related questions, you’ll now receive information and links that draw from more diverse content sources to help you discover timely and relevant content tailored to our interests,” the company wrote in a blog post.
The terms of the partnerships are similar to Meta’s previously announced deal with Reuters in October 2024, which was a multi-year agreement that included unspecified compensation, a company spokesperson said.
Meta said it will continue to add more partnerships with news outlets in the future.
Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, and Meta declined further comment.
The agreements marked a shift for Meta, which has resisted calls from executives and regulators in the US and abroad to pay proper compensation to publishers for their organizations’ work.
The group of outlets in the new deals come from across the political spectrum – the latest sign that Meta is trying to address allegations of political bias in its products.
The News/Media Alliance, a trade group that represents hundreds of news outlets including The Post, expressed cautious optimism about the announcement.
“These deals reinforce the strength of the licensing market, and also demonstrate both that there is value in our content and that licensing is in fact possible,” said Danielle Coffey, the News/Media Alliance’s CEO and president. “Certainty in the law will help ensure there’s a fair exchange and that all rights are enforced.”
Meta scrapped its Facebook News tab in the US and Australia in 2024 and blocked Canadian users from accessing news content after the country passed a law requiring it to pay publishers.
In 2022, Meta began informing US news publishers it would no longer pay for content and pulled all funding for the deals.
Meta and rivals like OpenAI and Google have faced mounting pressure to pay publishers due to concerns that they’ve used copyrighted content to train their AI models without proper credit or permission.
As The Post reported, a group of prominent conservatives recently urged President Trump to resist Big Tech’s argument that its use of copyrighted material is protected by so-called “fair use doctrine.”
Fox News shares a common owner with News Corp, which publishes The Post.
