Ringier expands AI partnership with OpenAI across its business

Swiss media company Ringier has announced a company-wide partnership with OpenAI covering information technology, digital marketplaces and support for journalistic research, SRF reported. The deal includes the gradual introduction of ChatGPT Enterprise across the Ringier Group, with support from OpenAI.

Ringier says it will not share journalistic content with OpenAI, unlike other media companies such as Axel Springer, which explicitly do so in their partnership. SRF media editor Salvador Atasoy said the deal also underlined Ringier’s position as an international media company and one of the larger media groups in Europe.

AI expected to become more central to journalism

Atasoy said the partnership was likely to further expand the use of artificial intelligence in Ringier’s journalism. The company has already focused heavily on data-driven work for years, including a partnership with the controversial software company Palantir to link and analyse data in its newsroom.

AI is now being added as another important tool. Ringier stresses that people will continue to make decisions about the interpretation and publication of content. However, Atasoy said the partnership showed that AI was becoming more than a possible journalistic tool and was increasingly turning into a central part of content production.

Five areas covered by the partnership

Ringier said the cooperation would focus on five strategic areas:

Providing ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of ChatGPT developed specifically for companies; using OpenAI development tools in IT; adding an OpenAI interface to its marketplace platforms; using AI for research, content structuring and cross checking sources; and applying AI in finance, human resources, communications and the legal department.

No binding rules for disclosure in Switzerland

Atasoy said there was currently no way to verify whether editorial responsibility remained with people when AI was used so broadly. Journalism in Switzerland was in a kind of Wild West situation, he said, because there were no binding rules governing the disclosure of AI use, its extent or the share of AI generated content.

SRG and the Swiss Press Council are working on standards, but there were currently no results or examples of their application, Atasoy said. Readers therefore had to rely on the guidelines published by individual media outlets, and those guidelines were often limited or absent. Blick, for example, uses categories such as “AI generated, editorially checked”, but it is unclear what that means in practice.

Questions over Ringier’s criticism of AI companies

Ringier CEO Marc Walder has repeatedly described the unauthorised use of journalistic content by AI companies as the biggest theft in the history of journalism. Atasoy said the new partnership was nevertheless consistent with Ringier’s earlier decision to work more closely with Palantir and with the company’s recognition of AI’s power as a tool.

The key question, he said, was whether the cooperation would remain limited in this way. Using AI as a tool also meant sharing data and training the AI with that data. A controlled partnership with an AI company therefore did not automatically prevent the training of AI on journalistic knowledge.

Ringier publishes titles including Blick, SonntagsBlick, Beobachter, Bolero, Cash and Schweizer Illustrierte. Its portfolio also includes radio and television, as well as the digital marketplaces ImmoScout24 and AutoScout24.