3 hours ago
1 ARTICLE AD
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.
Romain Dillet is a Senior Reporter at TechCrunch.
 
 He has written over 3,000 articles on technology and tech startups and has established himself as an influential voice on the European tech scene. He has a deep background in startups, privacy, security, fintech, blockchain, mobile, social and media.
 
 With twelve years of experience at TechCrunch, he’s one of the familiar faces of the tech publication that obsessively covers Silicon Valley and the tech industry. In fact, his career started at TechCrunch when he was 21. Based in Paris, many people in the tech ecosystem consider him as the most knowledgeable tech journalist in town.
 
 Romain likes to spot important startups before anyone else. He was the first person to cover N26, Revolut and DigitalOcean. He has written scoops on large acquisitions from Apple, Microsoft and Snap.
 
 When he’s not writing, Romain is also a developer — he understands how the tech behind the tech works. He also has a deep historical knowledge of the computer industry for the past 50 years. He knows how to connect the dots between innovations and the effect on the fabric of our society.
 
 Romain graduated from Emlyon Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He has helped several non-profit organizations, such as StartHer, an organization that promotes education and empowerment of women in technology, and Techfugees, an organization that empowers displaced people with technology.
Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news
