On Monday (29th April), the Financial Times announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind the viral chatbot, ChatGPT. With the collaboration, OpenAI wants to enhance ChatGPT and improve the usefulness of its AI models by incorporating articles or excerpts from the Financial Times. On its part, the FT seeks to develop new AI products and features for its readers.
After the implementation, ChatGPT users will show summaries and quotes from FT articles, along with links to these articles, in response to their queries. OpenAI will compensate the publisher for using its content to enhance OpenAI’s generative AI capabilities. However, the financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.
The Chief Executive of the Financial Times Group, John Ridding said, “This is an important agreement that recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI.”
With this, the Financial Times has become the latest major news organisation to strike a content licensing agreement with OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed startup. Over the past few months, OpenAI has signed similar deals with the Associated Press, global news publisher Axel Springer, France’s Le Monde, and Spain-based Prisa Media.
For those unversed, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence-driven chatbot that was launched in late 2022. It kick-started the Generative AI boom worldwide and remains one of the leading players in the AI chatbot field. It can mimic human conversation and perform tasks such as creating summaries of long text based on users’ prompts (commands/queries).
However, it is pertinent to note that several AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, have been exposed for their anti-India biases and being riddled with wokeism. In our 2023 article titled, ChatGPT – The buzz around it, the inherent biases of the algorithm, its jokes on Hinduism, and more – The basics of the AI-based platform, OpIndia comprehensibly explained the inherent bias of these platforms, which can be traced back to the acute biases of the sources on which they rely.
Conspicuously, FT, which will be the latest source to train OpenAI’s AI model, heaped praises for its “award-winning journalism” while announcing the strategic partnership. However, the publisher has been notorious for peddling lies, anti-India propaganda, fanning unsubstantiated allegations, baseless rhetoric of Muslim victimhood, conspiracy theories to discredit India’s success story, and unwarranted trespasses in India’s Internal affairs.
Financial Times publishes shredded Indian Tricolour in its anti-Modi article, disrespecting the Indian flag
In November 2019, the Financial Times published an article where they had shown the Indian national flag in tatters. The FT article by Gideon Rachman showed the Ashok Chakra in the Indian flag broken into pieces. The disrespectful image that undermined the sovereign nation’s dignity and symbols drew widespread condemnation in India.
Looking down on India: FT peddled lies claiming PM Modi may have ‘secretly’ taken a foreign dose during the COVID pandemic, had also discredited Indian vaccines
In a bid to mock and discredit India’s success story in vaccinating its large population, Amy Kazmin – the Chief of the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau, had resorted to weaving conspiracy theories around Prime Minister Modi. She had concocted a story saying that PM Modi might have already been vaccinated with a ‘foreign vaccine in secret’ as he did not trust the two Indian-made vaccines.
A report written by Ami Kazmin was published in FT on 26th January 2021, which raised doubts not only over India’s vaccine program, but also claimed that PM Modi had already been vaccinated with a foreign vaccine, but the information was kept secret.
The report also spread false propaganda against the Bharat Biotech-manufactured vaccine saying top ‘Indian scientists’ have questioned the decision to use Covaxin.
The conspiracy theories of Amy Kazmin were busted after Prime Minister Modi took his first dose of the Indian-made Covaxin vaccine on 1st March, 2021, during the second phase of the centre’s vaccination drive, when the drive was started for senior citizens.
The Financial Times bats for terrorists, tries to pin blame on India over Nijjar assassination row
After Justin Trudeau strained diplomatic ties with India over the Nijjar assassination allegation against New Delhi, Financial Times tried to pin the blame on India. Like most of the other Western publications, the Financial Times had shifted the burden of proving India’s involvement in the killing of Nijjar from Ontario to New Delhi. It blamed India for being responsible for not denying the allegations convincingly enough for the West’s liking and Trudeau’s failure to furnish evidence that buttressed his claims.
In November 2023, FT published an article sympathising with Khalistani terrorist Pannun over the alleged assassination plot against the SFJ terrorist. Instead of pondering on why the US has been harbouring terrorists, it claimed that the US govt was worried that ‘India-backed unknown gunmen’ might kill be on a killing spree.
Financial Times blatantly tried to prove India the ‘weakest link’ in the Quad, despite the quoted experts stating otherwise
In another anti-India diatribe, the UK-based news outlet Financial Times had once declared India as the “weakest link” in the Quad alliance, an informal strategic alliance of four democracies – United States, India, Australia, and Japan to take on China.
The piece written by Amy Kazmin and Demetri Sevastopulo claims that the coronavirus crisis that stuck India this year and the subsequent vaccine export ban imposed by the Indian government in response to the pandemic has overshadowed Quad’s intentions to be an alternative to China in the region. Instead, India’s failure has created an opportunity that China is exploiting, claims the report.
‘They were small satellites’: FT had ridiculed ISRO’s achievement of launching a record 104 satellites in one go
When launched 104 satellites into orbit in a single mission, instead of lauding India’s achievements, FT and other Western media outlets chose to snidely point out that many of the satellites were in fact of “smaller size”. The FT had tweeted, “Some of the satellites, owned by the US company Planet, were just 30cm in length and weighed under 5kg.”
FT journalist lied about being ‘kicked out’ of an India-Russia event for its crusade against Adani Group, later admitted that all journalists were asked to leave from ‘close door’ meeting
Last year, FT’s American journalist John Reed claimed that he was thrown out of an India-Russia event on 17th April 2023 over “security concerns”. The event in question was organised by FICCI at Delhi’s The Leela Hotel. It was titled ‘India Russia Business Conclave’, and had Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov as chief guests.
Soon, his supposed expulsion was presented as a crackdown on the media outlet, FT, for its reports against the Adani group and its refusal to take down its article on the Adani Group, even after the latter had pointed out that the allegations were “misleading” and “malicious”.
Incidentally, Reed informed on Twitter that he was asked to leave by a Russian and not an Indian.
In a further embarrassment, hours later, many social media users pointed out his fallacy, which forced him to reveal that all the journalists were asked to leave the event as it was converted to a closed-door event four minutes before it started. Simply put, it was a closed-door meeting between the two leaders, and all media persons were asked to leave, the FT scribe cried hoarse claiming that their outlet was being singled out for its “Award-winning journalism”.
Nefarious agenda of “Interfering in India’s Internal matters” and “Impacting the outcome of Indian elections”
Marching shoulder to shoulder with its Western peers, FT has been furthering the falsehood of India’s democratic backsliding, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and curbing media freedoms among others. It has been trying to meddle with the Indian election and politics, and acting as if it is also a political player. This includes unwarranted commentary on ongoing legal cases and carrying hit pieces on Indian businessmen and politicians that are perceived as supporters of the Modi government.
The tainted and anti-India reportage of FT and ilks has prompted users to express concerns about the possible fragmentation of the internet into several camps. The development can force nations to come up with their indigenous alternative to make them immune from the extreme biases and nefarious agendas like wokeism of these platforms.
Incidentally, Google was once forced to apologise after its AI chatbot, Gemini AI refused to acknowledge the existence of ‘White’ people and generated only images of black persons. It drew massive flakes for its wokeist agenda.