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A French artificial intelligence start-up named Mistral has secured a multimillion-euro agreement with Agence France-Presse to integrate thousands of the newswire’s articles into its chatbot. The partnership is positioned as a European defense against fact-checking challenges from Silicon Valley competitors. The deal, unfolded on Thursday, will input over 2,000 AFP news articles in six languages daily into Mistral’s chatbot, Le Chat, enabling users to address inquiries and assist in document drafting.
“Having such agreements in place is crucial for well-informed information on verified content,” mentioned Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s co-founder and CEO, to the Financial Times.
Both companies portrayed the agreement as essential for ensuring Mistral’s chatbot is anchored in verifiable intel. This development comes as Meta and Elon Musk’s X step back on content regulation and assert the importance of “free speech” prior to Donald Trump’s presidential induction.
“The recent actions by Silicon Valley rivals reveal the urgent need for Europe to unify in defense of its flourishing technological domain,” Mensch remarked.
“‘Free speech’ is currently being wielded against Europe to a significant extent, with a Big Tech offensive on European regulation. In the prevailing climate, this deal underlines the importance of an AI player investing in independent, evidence-based professional journalism,” noted AFP CEO Fabrice Fries to the FT.
Just recently, Google disclosed a similar agreement with Associated Press, a long-standing collaborator on its search engine, to exhibit the newswire’s feed in its Gemini AI app.
Back in June last year, Mistral secured €600 million in fresh funding with a valuation of €6 billion, positioning it as Europe’s most prominent AI entity and the sole start-up on the continent to produce substantial language models that rival OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI.
Mensch highlighted that Mistral possesses a partnership model that is more equitable and shares value more evenly compared to its American counterparts.
Fries indicated that AFP had deliberated on licensing agreements with various AI firms lately, emphasizing that only with Mistral did they experience a partnership rather than a straightforward sale transaction.
The financial terms of Mistral and AFP’s deal, spanning multiple years, were not disclosed. In contrast to analogous agreements between US-based OpenAI and other media entities, Fries clarified that this deal was not merely a one-time deal for data fueling significant language models.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has executed content agreements with media entities like News Corp, Axel Springer, and the Financial Times. Last Wednesday, the San Francisco-headquartered group led by Sam Altman revealed plans to support four new localized US newsrooms for online publisher Axios, with the output integrated into ChatGPT.
