--- title: "The Atlantic’s Staff Is Furious About Its Deal With OpenAI" description: "Journalists at The Atlantic wrote a letter to their leadership addressing their concerns about the magazine's licensing deal with OpenAI." date: "2024-08-01" modified: "2024-08-01" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/atlantic-staff-unhappy-about-openai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "ai" - "ai journalism" - "ai search" - "OpenAI" --- # The Atlantic’s Staff Is Furious About Its Deal With OpenAI ![Journalists at The Atlantic wrote a letter to their leadership addressing their concerns about the magazine's licensing deal with OpenAI.]() *\Image: Robert Alexander via Getty\* Journalists at *The Atlantic* are expressing concern over their employers' content licensing partnership with OpenAI, [*Semafor's* Max Tani reports](). The *Atlantic* [announced]() its deal with OpenAI back in May, arguing that the "strategic content and product partnership" with the ChatGPT maker would position the magazine as a "premium news source within OpenAI" as it inches further into the world of search. "We believe that people searching with AI models will be one of the fundamental ways that people navigate the web in the future," *Atlantic* CEO Nicholas Thompson said in a statement at the time of the deal. "We're delighted to partner with OpenAI, to make *The Atlantic's* reporting and stories more discoverable to their millions of users, and to have a voice in shaping how news is surfaced on their platforms." But today, in a letter addressed to Thompson and *Atlantic* editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, the *Atlantic's* staff argue that "new revelations" about OpenAI and its famous chatbot, ChatGPT, have heightened their concerns about the controversial AI deal — and as the journalists whose work is being lifted to fuel OpenAI's products, they also deserve to have a seat at the bargaining table. "Our editorial leaders say that *The Atlantic* is a magazine made by humans, for humans," reads the journalists' letter. "We could not agree more." "Although we understand that there may be a place at *The Atlantic* for artificial intelligence," they add, "*Atlantic* staffers must have a voice in how it affects our work." https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1819027421212856826 As noted in the letter, the *Atlantic* journalists' concerns involve ChatGPT's failures as a product as well as OpenAI's actions as a company. On the product side, they correctly argue that ChatGPT is known to "hallucinate" — fabricate false claims from nothing — "links to partner publications, including our own," and also direct readers "to aggregations of our original reporting rather than to our actual site." In other words, according to the staffers, even though the *Atlantic* has entered a partnership agreement with OpenAI, the product is still failing to consistently point readers directly to the magazine's original reporting. This ultimately means that the *Atlantic* is losing reader clicks — and thus advertising dollars and subscribers. The staffers' letter also points to OpenAI's [exploits]() in its court battle against *The New York Times*, which last year sued the AI company for copyright infringement. The case is ongoing, and OpenAI recently [made headlines]() after it demanded to see all notes by *NYT* reporters — an unprecedented request that would challenge journalistic legal protections as well as baseline journalistic ethics, and a move that the *Atlantic* staffers recount in their letter as "troubling." "In litigation with one of our peer publications," the *Atlantic* staffers' letter reads, "OpenAI has demanded that journalists turn over their notes, interview memos, and other materials used in their reporting, which is incredibly troubling." Given the *Atlantic's* venerable status, its decision to enter a content deal with OpenAI — the financial terms of which are unknown — was a huge win for the AI firm, which also counts *Vox* and *New York Magazine*-owner [Vox Media](), *Wall Street Journal* owner [News Corp](), and [*TIME Magazine*]() as publishing partners, among others. But while the *Atlantic's* leadership may have made their bet that AI search products will be the way of journalism's future, the magazine's journalists are making the case that maintaining journalistic standards — and protecting the work of journalists — can't play second fiddle in that process. "AI cannot replace journalists, and no publication that aspires to the standards *The Atlantic* has embodied for more than a century and a half can allow that to happen," the journalists write. "Among the possible points of contention between the editorial union and management, this should not be one." "We want the company to stop prioritizing its bottom line and champion *The Atlantic's* journalism by bringing a meaningful proposal on AI to the bargaining table," they added. **More on AI and journalism:** [*Amid New York Times Lawsuit, ChatGPT Is Citing Plagiarized Versions of NYT Articles on an Armenian Content Mill*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()