Robert Thomson, the boss of News Corp, has warned that AI companies are making a \u201cfundamental miscalculation\u201d by not spending enough on content.<\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview as part of The Times Tech Summit held on Tuesday, Thomson asserted that data should be valued on a par with the tens of billions of dollars that AI developers have been spending on infrastructure, such as chips and data centres.<\/p>\n
The information that goes into creating the technology<\/a> is \u201cthe essence of AI,\u201d the chief executive of The Times\u2019 parent company said, because tech companies \u201cneed news to keep the AI engines fresh and so that immediacy that a news organisation can provide is essential to them\u201d. <\/p>\n \u2022 Follow news from The Times Tech Summit live<\/a><\/p>\n In addition, the strength of creativity and intellectual property rights in the US gives the country an advantage over technological rivals such as China, which it needs to protect, Thomson said.<\/p>\n Copyright has become one of the most contentious issues of the AI era, as creators have seen their information used without permission. <\/p>\n Artists and writers such as Elton John, Lord Lloyd Webber, Sir Stephen Fry and Sir Paul McCartney have all spoken out on the issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2022 The 20 jobs most at risk from AI \u2014 and the 20 safest<\/a><\/p>\n Thomson has led the charge for the media industry, adopting what he calls a \u201cwoo or sue\u201d approach, agreeing licensing deals with some, such as OpenAI, and taking those who do not respect intellectual property rights to court. <\/p>\n While he would not confirm the value of the deal with the ChatGPT maker, it is reportedly worth $250 million over five years.<\/p>\n Along with a group of other publishers as part of a class action suit, News Corp, the owner of HarperCollins, recently won a $1.5 billion settlement from Anthropic<\/a> over claims that it used millions of pirated books to train its AI chatbot, Claude. <\/p>\n While winning such cases is clearly valuable, Thomson said, the value of litigation also lies in the disclosure of information because it created transparency, which leads to greater accountability. <\/p>\n