News Corp's Robert Thomson praises OpenAI, blasts Meta as licensing row heats up
The comments come as Meta threatens to walk away from Australian deals struck under the News Media Bargaining Code worth more than $70 million a year.
News Corp’s global chief executive Robert Thomson has joined the chorus of criticism towards Meta flowing from the Murdoch controlled media operator, while heaping praise on OpenAI’s Sam Altman as the company edges closer towards artificial intelligence licensing deals.
At a Morgan Stanley investment conference in the US overnight, Thomson described the impasse between News Corp — publisher of the Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The Sun, The Australian and a string of Australian tabloids — and the Silicon Valley behemoth as being in its early stages, and rebuked the company’s claims that users no longer engage with news on its platforms.
“When you look at Facebook suggesting, for example, that 3% of usage with relates to news well that's obviously preposterous figure,” Thomson told attendees at the conference, according to an audio recording of the event.
“I mean, how much discussion is there around news? You have the core news and then I can tell you 100% of the contemporary factual information on Facebook is news. So those are the numbers that really, Facebook should be focused on as well as being focused on its responsibility to all Australians.”
