In what has come across as a surprising move for several users, Financial Times has announced a collaboration with OpenAI for to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content. The popular AI chatbot, with the aid of Financial Times’ journalism, will improve its models and also partner to new AI products and features for FT readers, said a blog post on OpenAI. The collaboration will enable users of ChatGPT with access to specific summarized content, quoted excerpts, and valuable hyperlinks to Financial Times articles when their inquiries warrant it.
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“Our partnership and ongoing dialogue with the FT is about finding creative and productive ways for AI to empower news organisations and journalists, and enrich the ChatGPT experience with real-time, world-class journalism for millions of people around the world,” said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI on the new partnership.
Internet Stands Divided on Financial Times and OpenAI Partnership
Several users have expressed concerns on the use of artificial intelligence in journalism, considering the fact that AI models have a tendency to hallucinate. “Um is that great?! Frankly I don’t know that I want my financial news to have the occasional “hallucinations” like spouting incorrect facts and displaying 7 fingers on one hand. As far as partnerships go, try to show an altruistic use of the tech for the betterment of humanity and not the enhancement of financial news,” says a users on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“It feels like the early death of traditional news over LLMs giving us the news,” says another view. Another interesting view, from a user who goes by the name Cosmic Muffet, says: “This is going to be great! Financial “news” is already a combination of hallucinations and vapid boiler plate repetition of virtually meaningless text from heavily edited reports, so offloading that to a robot will hopefully create more lower cost noise to bury the signal that helps people in the know launder their insider trading. Very exciting for the market.”
However, some users believe that this move would be a boost for OpenAI’s ChatGPT especially when compared to Google’s Gemini. “Hopefully this gives more current knowledge base to ChatGPT, especially with GPT-5 on anvil. That would be a big boost to OpenAI offering. This has been a big ChatGPT disadvantage so far compared to Google Gemini,” says a view from Prashant.
What Financial Times Says About the Partnership
Financial Times says that the publication was always open to embracing new technologies and disruption and would continue to operate with vigilance. “We’re keen to explore the practical outcomes regarding news sources and AI through this partnership. We value the opportunity to be inside the development loop as people discover content in new ways. As with any transformative technology, there is potential for significant advancements and major challenges, but what’s never possible is turning back time. It’s important for us to represent quality journalism as these products take shape – with the appropriate safeguards in place to protect the FT’s content and brand,” said John Ridding, CEO, Financial Times Group.
