Media German news magazines cooperate with US AI search engine

The publishing group behind the news magazine "Der Spiegel" is to work with Google competitor Perplexity AI in the field of artificial intelligence. The aim of the agreement is to make "Spiegel" content more visible on the Perplexity platform.

This was stated in a blog post by the Hamburg-based media company on Tuesday.

In return, "Spiegel" will receive a share of the advertising revenue generated with its content. Spiegel's agreement with Perplexity is part of a comprehensive media cooperation between the San Francisco-based start-up company.

The "Perplexity Publisher Program" also includes "Time Magazine", "Fortune", "Entrepreneur" and the "Texas Tribune". The Hamburg-based publishing group, which owns the news magazine "Der Spiegel" as well as "Manager Magazin", "Spiegel TV" and the football magazine "11 Freunde", emphasized that it decides for itself which content to make available to Perplexity.

Perplexity has developed a chatbot that can summarize search results and refer to sources. The central idea is to provide concrete answers instead of a collection of web links. Early investors in Perplexity AI include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, and chip manufacturer Nvidia.

"Der Spiegel" emphasized that its own content is not used to train a language model. Christoph Zimmer, Head of Product Development at the "Spiegel" Group, says that artificial intelligence has the potential to fundamentally change the way the public processes and uses information.

"What really makes our journalism better and what is just a fascinating gimmick will only become clear when we experiment with the new possibilities, fail and develop new ideas. We are convinced that we should go down this path together with like-minded and innovative providers of artificial intelligence," said Zimmer.