OpenAI has landed a new content deal with the FT. But instead of being a merely simple deal in which OpenAI gets words, and FT gets money, the two are teaming up a bit more deeply. Look to see FT.com links in ChaptGPT in the future.

But the FT-OpenAI tie-up tells us a bit more than that one media company will soon have a few more ducats in its pockets. No, it’s yet another OpenAI deal that will see the Microsoft-backed AI shop further cement its ability to ingest training material without legal risk, and start to pay some of the providers of said material for their work.

All good, right? In a sense, but there’s a concern that as some AI companies work to start paying for training data after they consumed oceans of it, they could wind up pulling the training ladders up behind them. If that happens, other AI companies that might want to follow in their footsteps could find steeper, and more expensive, the same path that the OpenAIs of the world already hiked.

It’s a weird and irksome situation in which you want to see fair payment for materials used, but also ensure that we don’t hand the future of AI to a bunch of already wealthy companies. That would just cement oligopoly. And, of course, media companies that are spending all their money and more to report and write need fair comp. Those are the stakes. Let’s talk about it!