News Corp CEO Robert Thomson blasted AI companies for spending billions on super chips and data centers while shortchanging newsrooms and other content creators — calling it a “fundamental miscalculation.”
Speaking Tuesday at The Times Tech Summit in London, Thomson said AI businesses need to invest more in “editorial content,” calling it “the essence of AI.”
“If you’re not spending billions of dollars on the content, but you are spending billions of dollars on the infrastructure, then you’re making a fundamental miscalculation about the value of what you’re doing,” said Thomson.
News Corp is the parent company of The Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and HarperCollins.
Thomson explained that AI businesses “need news to remain and keep the AI engines fresh. And so that immediacy that news organizations can provide is essential to them.”
Under Thomson’s leadership, News Corp has adopted a “woo or sue” approach to the AI industry — cutting licensing deals with firms that respect copyrights while taking those that don’t to court.
Last year, News Corp struck a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI that was valued at more than $250 million over five years.
Such deals set a precedent for future ties between media organizations and AI companies, according to Thomson.
“We feel a sense of social responsibility, as well as a responsibility to our shareholders,” he said. “And once you start to create precedents, you make it easier for us, but you also make it easier for other companies.”
When deals don’t happen, litigation has the benefit of creating accountability, Thomson said.
“It’s more effective if you win, obviously. But actually, the process of disclosure is very important,” he stated. “Once there’s more transparency, I think there’s more accountability.”
The CEO also urged news organizations to take a proactive approach to asserting their rights.
“Ultimately, it’s up to every news organization to stand up for its rights,” Thomson said, “to be very aware of what’s going on and to have a sophisticated dialogue with these companies, because these are sophisticated companies.”
He added that the media need to improve continuously, since “being on the defensive is not a winning strategy.”
Thomson likewise urged the US to protect its strong creative and intellectual property rights, saying they give the country an advantage over tech rivals like China.
Since AI systems are designed by humans, their creators must be responsible for outcomes — intentional or otherwise — Thomson argued.
“We can’t allow this sensibility to prevail where companies are saying, ‘Oh, actually you can’t blame us because we don’t know exactly how it works,’” he said.
The exec’s comments came amid a wave of copyright suits accusing AI firms of stealing content to train their models.
The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, while eight newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital — including the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune — filed a similar case earlier this year.
Other publishers, including Condé Nast, the Atlantic and Politico, have sued Cohere Inc., a rival AI company, for widespread copyright and trademark infringement.
Dow Jones, the News Corp subsidiary which publishes The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch, has also sued Perplexity AI for allegedly using its news articles without authorization.
Thomson Reuters won a separate case against Ross Intelligence, which a federal judge found had unlawfully copied content from its Westlaw database.
Earlier this year, the News/Media Alliance — representing hundreds of news outlets — filed a lawsuit against Cohere for extracting data from millions of articles, while Hollywood studios Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery have all filed suit against Midjourney, a San Francisco-based AI company, over alleged film piracy.
Disney and Universal filed a joint suit against Midjourney while WBD filed its own separate action weeks later.
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