Anthropic By Mark Stenberg --> Key Takeaways Anthropic inked its first content licensing deal, striking a partnership with the Associated Press just before the midterms. Unlike ChatGPT’s parent OpenAI, which has over a dozen licensing agreements, Anthropic had resisted formal publisher partnerships until now. Real-time election data from the AP now allows Claude to surface timely, high-credibility updates—showcasing the value of premium publisher content. Beta · Generated by AI, reviewed by ADWEEK newsroom This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here .
If, by chance, you opened Claude on Election Night and asked it for an update on the latest polling data, you would have been treated to a novel sight: up-the-minute information, provided by and attributed to the Associated Press.
This new development was the result of a content and data licensing deal struck between the two organizations, which was struck just before the midterm elections, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment, and the AP did not provide a comment on the record. The financial specifics of the arrangement, as well as other critical details, such as its timeframe, were not disclosed by either party.
Nonetheless, the deal marks a dramatic evolution in strategy for Anthropic, as the artificial intelligence firm behind Claude had not, until Tuesday, struck a content licensing deal with any digital publisher.
In that regard, Claude differed dramatically from its primary competitor, ChatGPT, whose parent company OpenAI has negotiated more than a dozen content licensing deals with major publishers, including Axel Springer, News Corp., and The Atlantic, among others.
In fact, the reluctance by Anthropic to engage in any kind of content licensing discussion had become such a subject of intrigue within the industry that I explored the situation in August, in one of my more literally titled pieces .
At the time, digital media executives told me that the company genuinely believes that its scraping and use of publisher content is legally permissible under the concept of fair use. As such, it had not moved to enter into any such partnerships, nor had it indicated any plans to do so in the future.
So why change its tactics now, especially as the company prepares to go public in a matter of weeks?
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The likely answer is that Anthropic finally admitted what publishers have long known to be true, which is that an information index without access to up-to-date data is dramatically limited in its utility.
Because Anthropic refused to strike content licensing deals with major news publishers, it lacked access to the kind of credible, timely reporting that consumers turn to in key moments like an election cycle.
Without the ability to intake data from premium publishers, whose websites block its crawlers, Anthropic could only cite what AI researcher Deana Burke calls the “unlocked web.” These low-credibility sites might serve as sufficient sources of information for low-stakes queries, but they cannot tell a user which politician won a Senate seat 10 m…