Mistral signs deal with AFP to offer answers to the update in Le Chat

Just one day after Google inked a deal with The Associated Press, Mistral is also announcing a content agreement with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to improve the accuracy of answers in The CatMistral’s chatbot product.

This is the first deal of its kind for the Paris-based artificial intelligence company. And it indicates that Mistral does not want to be considered as “just” a foundation model.

We also want to build attractive products, starting with Le Chat. From what I heard, the company is also working on dedicated applications to access Le Chat and better compete with ChatGPT or Claude.

In the future, Le Chat will be able to take advantage of AFP’s daily production of stories. And given that AFP is one of the largest news agencies in the world, it is represents a 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 since 1983. However, photos and videos are not part of this multi-year agreement. To remind you, Mistral focuses on large language models and does not offer image generation models.

OpenAI has led the charge when it comes to content offerings. The creator of ChatGPT has signed 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 partners in the works.

“We believe that improving the accuracy of responses (Le Chat) is a key step in the implementation of our technology, especially for companies,” Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement. “Through this partnership, we offer our customers a unique multicultural and multilingual alternative.”

Today’s collaboration is also a first for AFP. And it couldn’t come at a better time, as Meta has ended its third-party fact-checking program just last week. AFP was one of the key partners in Meta’s fact-checking system. “Thanks to this partnership, AFP is diversifying its sources of income even more,” said Fabrice Fries, president and director general of AFP, in a statement.

While the AI ​​industry seeks to improve its products with these arrangements, there are two side effects that can be considered as added benefits. First, AI companies can position themselves as (financial) allies to news organizations. Second, these partnerships protect them from possible copyright infringement claims.