The Associated Press has stated, through its executive leadership, that its decision to license its journalism archive to artificial intelligence companies and its decision to offer buyouts to its journalists are separate decisions. The Bureau of Archival Asset Management and Personnel Disposition accepts this clarification.
The Bureau is filing both decisions anyway.
Asset Transaction Log — Ref. AT-01 through AT-04
AT-01 — July 13, 2023
AP and OpenAI announced a two-year licensing agreement. OpenAI received access to AP's text archive dating back to 1985 — approximately 38 years of accumulated journalism at the time of signing. Financial terms were not disclosed. AP received access to OpenAI's "technology and product expertise."
AP's Chief Revenue Officer Kristin Heitmann stated: "We are pleased that OpenAI recognizes that fact-based, nonpartisan news content is essential to this evolving technology."
The Bureau notes that the archive was described as essential. The value assigned to this essential resource was not disclosed.
AT-02 — January 2025
AP and Google announced a licensing arrangement making AP the first news publisher contracted by Google to deliver a real-time information feed into the Gemini AI chatbot. The feed was made available initially to paid Google Workspace Business users. Financial terms were not disclosed.
AP was described as Google's first such deal with a news publisher. The Bureau regards first-in-category status as a notable institutional achievement. The financial terms of this achievement were not disclosed.
AT-03 — October 2025
AP joined Microsoft's pay-per-use AI content marketplace as one of the first wave of publisher pilot partners. AP described the arrangement as "very early days and experimental" and said it wanted "a seat at that table." Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Bureau notes that AP characterized its third AI licensing arrangement as experimental. The Bureau further notes that by October 2025, AP's revenue from technology companies had grown 200 percent over four years.
AT-04 — 2025
AP listed its content on Snowflake's enterprise data marketplace via Cortex Knowledge Extensions, enabling enterprises to enrich AI applications with AP journalism. This is a fourth channel by which AP's archive generates revenue. Financial terms were not disclosed.
BUREAU NOTE: Four separate AI licensing arrangements. Four separate non-disclosures. The archive generated a 200 percent revenue increase in four years, and the price of the archive has not been stated once. The Bureau regards undisclosed terms as a standard institutional practice. The Bureau also notes that the journalists who produced the archive were not informed of what it sold for. The Bureau files this as a separate finding, unrelated to the asset transactions above.
Personnel Disposition Log — Ref. PT-01 through PT-02
PT-01 — November 2024
AP announced it would cut approximately 8 percent of its workforce through buyouts and layoffs to "accelerate" its digital news strategy. The AP News Guild identified 121 union employees eligible for voluntary buyouts — specifically those aged 54½ or older. Of the 121 eligible, 116 were in the U.S. editorial unit. Five were in U.S. technology.
The Bureau notes the ratio: 116 editorial staff eligible; 5 technology staff eligible. This is the distribution of a workforce being accelerated in a particular direction.
PT-02 — April 2026
AP offered buyouts to more than 120 U.S.-based journalists. AP executive editor Julie Pace described the move as coming "from a position of strength" and attributed it to a "changing customer base."
AP's stated goal is to reduce global staff by less than 5 percent, primarily affecting the U.S. News team.
Pace added: "We're not a newspaper company and we haven't been for quite some time."
The News Media Guild stated that AP "continues to get rid of experienced staff and flirt with artificial intelligence" while refusing to offer staff "appropriate training and tools." The Guild noted that AP "employs hundreds of talented journalists who are willing and able to adjust to the changing media landscape."
The Bureau records this as the union's position. The Bureau also records that AP's position — that the AI deals and the buyouts are separate decisions — was not contradicted by anything AP said, and was contradicted by everything AP did.
BUREAU NOTE: In PT-01 and PT-02 combined, AP has offered exit packages to approximately 241 union-represented journalists. In AT-01, AP negotiated a first-mover safeguard — a contractual mechanism that would allow AP to revisit terms if a competitor subsequently secured a better deal with OpenAI. The archive was protected against undervaluation by a clause in a contract. The archivists were protected against undervaluation by a severance offer. Both facts are in the file. The Bureau records them in sequence.
The Revenue Map
AP's newspaper revenue fell 25 percent over the same four-year period in which tech revenue grew 200 percent. Newspapers now account for approximately 10 percent of AP income, down from historically being its dominant revenue source. Gannett and McClatchy — two of AP's largest newspaper customers — dropped AP in 2024. Lee Enterprises is seeking early contract exit.
AP's customer base has changed. Its newspaper customers, the ones who paid for journalism to be produced and distributed, are leaving. Its technology customers, the ones who pay for journalism that was already produced and can now be licensed, are expanding.
The journalists who were optimized to produce journalism for newspaper distribution are in the Personnel Disposition Log.
The journalism they already produced is in the Asset Transaction Log.
The two logs are filed separately.
BUREAU NOTE: AP pioneered the archive-licensing model in July 2023, preceding a wave of at least 26 international publisher deals. AP helped establish the industry norm under which decades of journalist output constitutes a licensable data asset with institutional value. AP then became, in the same institutional period, the first major news organization to apply the downstream logic of that norm to its own workforce. The Bureau does not know whether AP intended to demonstrate the model end-to-end. The Bureau notes that it has done so.
The Bureau of Archival Asset Management and Personnel Disposition is a sub-bureau of the Bureau of Public Agreement™. It maintains two ledgers. They are filed separately. The Bureau holds both. Both are accurate, both are complete, and both occurred at the same time.