- News Corp’s CEO outlines a strategy combining licensing and litigation to protect journalism content
- The company has secured multi-million dollar deals with tech giants like Meta and OpenAI for AI training data
- Thomson emphasises the importance of reliable news sources for AI development and warns against unauthorised use
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson has set out a blunt approach to AI companies seeking to use the publisher’s journalism as training data – “a woo and a sue”.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley media conference, Thomson described a strategy that mixes commercial partnerships with legal enforcement. “We’d like you to be our partner. But if you’re stealing our stuff, we are going to sue you … we’re coming for you. I mean, we can see you doing it. We’ll get round to you eventually. So there’ll be a discount for those who hand themselves in, and there’ll be a penalty for those that resist,” he said.
News Corp has been actively pursuing paid agreements for its content. Subsequent to Thomson’s appearance at the Morgan Stanley event, the company announced a three-year deal with Meta worth up to $50m a year to allow use of material from its US and UK titles to train AI systems. This sits alongside a 2024 agreement with OpenAI.
Thomson argued that premium titles remain essential to AI developers seeking reliable inputs. He told delegates that vertical specialists are approaching News Corp because the “data and the information and the news that they input has to be reliable, and it’s hard to beat the Times of London or The Australian or Dow Jones”.
He has paired commercial outreach with legal threats. In earlier remarks reported by TheWrap, Thomson said of companies using public data without authorisation: “If you have received stolen goods, we intend to pursue you relentlessly.”
That position builds on comments in 2024 about preferring agreements to default litigation, alongside longstanding warnings about generative AI’s capacity to “recycle itself in what you might call endless, perfidious permutations”.
Thomson’s contract was recently extended through June 2030, as the company doubles down on intellectual property and core assets including Dow Jones.
He also promoted the launch of the California Post, a Los Angeles-focused edition of the New York Post, telling delegates that app downloads “are twice what we thought” and that further metrics would be shared on the next earnings call.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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