Mistral signs deal with AFP to offer up-to-date answers in Le Chat

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

This is the first deal of this kind for the Paris-based artificial intelligence company. And it indicates that Mistral doesn’t want to be considered as “just” a foundation model maker.

It also wants to build appealing products, starting with Le Chat. From what I’ve heard, the company is also working on dedicated apps to access Le Chat and better compete with ChatGPT or Claude.

Going forward, Le Chat will be able to tap into AFP’s daily production of stories. And given that AFP is one of the biggest news agencies in the world, it represents a significant volume of text — around 2,300 stories per day in six languages (Arabic, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish).

Le Chat will be able to query AFP’s entire archive since 1983. However, photos and videos aren’t part of this multi-year agreement. As a reminder, Mistral focuses on large language models and doesn’t offer image-generation models.

OpenAI has been leading the charge when it comes to content deals. The maker of ChatGPT has inked partnerships with AP, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, El País, Financial Times, Le Monde, and others. It’s going to be interesting to see whether Mistral has more content partnerships in the works.

“We believe improving the accuracy of [Le Chat’s] responses is a key step in the deployment of our technology, particularly for businesses,” Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement. “Through this partnership, we are providing our clients with a unique multicultural and multilingual alternative.”

Today’s partnership is also a first for AFP. And it couldn’t come at a better time, as Meta ended its third-party fact-checking program just last week. AFP was one of the key partners in Meta’s fact-checking system. “Through this partnership, AFP is further diversifying its revenue sources,” AFP chairman and CEO Fabrice Fries said in a statement.

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