News v AI
News Corp chief Robert Thomson has warned generative artificial intelligence poses a grave risk to journalism - despite recently striking a landmark deal with the biggest AI platform.
"We would prefer to woo rather than sue, given that lawyers are the big winners in litigation,” News Corp global chief Robert Thomson wrote to staff in one of his characteristically florid and alliterative memos, reported exclusively today by John Buckley in Capital Brief. “But, be warned, if we don’t woo you, we may very well sue you.”
Thomson was laying out his thinking on the legion of generative AI firms currently bashing at the gates of publishers and media companies the world over and proposing radical new ways for content to be created, distributed and consumed.
It’s a succinct summary of the two imperfect options facing companies like News Corp in the middle of the AI revolution: do they make deals and capitulate to the totalising vision of the new generation of tech overlord? Or do they go down fighting and hope the courts hand them a reprieve, however temporary?
It’s no great secret that news publishers have been fighting an uphill battle ever since the internet ripped the power of distribution away from them and handed it to companies like Google and Meta. But the dual threat and opportunity of generative AI presents a unique challenge even when compared to the long march of search and social media through our media institutions.
