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French AI startup Mistral has struck a multi-million-euro deal with AFP to integrate thousands of news articles into its chatbot, making the partnership a European bulwark against attacks on fact-checking from its Silicon Valley rivals. .
The partnership between AFP, one of the world's oldest news agencies, and Mistral is a first for the two Paris-based companies, with many media groups deciding whether to enter into licensing agreements with AI companies or take legal action over copyright. And the alleged publication. violation.
The deal, announced Thursday, will feed more than 2,000 people Agence France-Presse News articles in six languages daily in Mistral's chatbot, Le Chat, allowing users to answer questions and help draft documents.
“It is important to have such agreements to have well-founded information about fact-checked content,” Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, told the Financial Times.
The companies presented the deal as a way to ensure that Mistral's chatbot relied on verifiable information. This comes as Meta and Elon Musk's X step back from content moderation and Declared the priority of “freedom of expression”in the period leading up to the inauguration of the next US President, Donald Trump.
“What it tells us is that Europe must come together to defend its thriving technology sector,” Mensch said of recent moves by Silicon Valley rivals.
“Freedom of expression is being used as a weapon against Europe to a large extent, and there is this attack by big tech companies European regulationAFP CEO Fabrice Fries told the Financial Times. “This particular type of deal, in the current context, shows that the AI player has bet on professional, independent, fact-based journalism.”
On Wednesday, Google announced a similar deal with The Associated Press, a long-time partner in its search engine, to display news feeds in its Gemini AI app.
Mistral raised 600 million euros New financing With a valuation of €6 billion in June last year, it is Europe's most prominent AI company and the only startup on the continent making large-scale language models that rival the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk's XAI.
Mensch said Mistral offered a partnership model that was “more open” and “shared value more evenly” than its US competitors.
Fries said AFP has discussed licensing deals with several Amnesty International companies in recent months, “but only with Mistral did we feel it was a real partnership, not just a sales agreement.”
The commercial terms of the Mistral-AFP deal, which extends over several years, were not disclosed. But unlike similar agreements reached between US-based OpenAI and other media groups, Fries said the deal is “not a one-time settlement” for the data on which large language models are trained.
OpenAI has content deals with media groups including News Corp, Axel Springer,… Financial Times. On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based group led by Sam Altman said it would fund four new local newsrooms in the US for online publisher Axios, with the output fed into ChatGPT.
Fries said dealing with AI companies “remains an open battle” and that he is closely following the US legal case between OpenAI and the New York Times over allegations of copyright infringement, which is set to set a new precedent regarding the value of work through publishers of model intelligence kits. Artificial.
For AFP, the agreement with Mistral also represents an opportunity to make up for revenue that will be lost with the expiration of its fact-checking contract with Meta.
The US social media group said last week that it plans to shift to community fact-checking in the US. Agence France-Presse employs 150 journalists at the fact-checking company Meta, according to Fries.
AFP generated about €20 million in 2024 from technology platforms, including fact-checking for the likes of Meta and content licensing deals with platforms including Google, accounting for about 10 percent of its commercial revenue last year.
“It is now clear that this pocket of revenue that has helped us grow and show profits for the last seven years is at risk,” Fries said. “It is clear that we need to find new players in technology as a source of revenue and AI players can be an alternative to platforms.”
