Just a day after Google signed a deal with the Associated Press, Mistral did was announced a content agreement with Newswire Agence France-Presse (AFP) to improve the accuracy of responses to Le ChatMistral’s chatbot.
This is the first deal of its kind for the Paris-based AI company and shows that Mistral doesn’t want to be seen as “just” a model maker.
From now on, Le Chat will be able to leverage AFP stories and since AFP is one of the biggest news agencies in the world, represents significant volume of text — about 2,300 stories per day in six languages (Arabic, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish).
Le Chat will be able to query the entire AFP archive dating back to 1983. However, photos and videos are not part of this multi-year agreement. As a reminder, Mistral focuses on large language models and does not offer image generation models. Image creation in Le Chat is done by Flux Pro by Black Forest Labs.
The AI company also wants to create engaging products, starting with Le Chat. From what I’ve heard, the company is also working on dedicated apps that allow users to access Le Chat and better compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
OpenAI is leading the charge when it comes to content offerings. The company has partnerships with AP, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, El País, Financial Times, Le Monde and others. It will be interesting to see if Mistral has more content partnerships in the works.
“We think we’re improving its accuracy [Le Chat’s] The answers are a key step in developing our technology, especially for enterprises,” said Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch. “Through this partnership, we provide our customers with a unique multicultural and multilingual alternative.”
Today’s partnership is also a first for AFP. It couldn’t have come at a better time, as Meta ended its third-party data audit program just last week, and AFP has been one of the key partners in Meta’s data audit system. “Through this partnership, AFP is further diversifying its sources of revenue,” said AFP President and CEO Fabrice Fries.
While the AI industry seeks to improve its products with these arrangements, there are two side effects that could be seen as additional benefits: first, AI companies can position themselves as (financial) allies of news organizations. and, these partnerships protect them from potential claims of copyright infringement.
