News Corp has been one of the most forthright voices in the ongoing battle royal between content creators and avaricious AI companies which appear to see nothing wrong in wholesale copyright infringement and IP theft in order to flesh out and train their models.

For example, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, among others, accusing the start-up of copyright infringement. CEO Robert Thomson is in no mood to mince his words:

It has become big over the past year that discerning audiences crave content that is profound and purposeful empathy amidst a morass of mediocrity and mendacity. Our writers and journalists and creators of all kinds are conscious of both responsibility and the opportunity, cognizant that we are at a historic inflection point in the age of AI. That AI age must cherish the value of intellectual property if we are collectively to realize our potential.

The AI frontline isn’t necessarily going to be located around tech, he suggests:

Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts, but with to undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity. We need to be more enlightened to unitize [AI] socially and commercially.

He adds:

Companies are spending tens of billions on data centers, tens of billions on chips, tens of billions on energy generation. These same companies need to spend tens of millions or more on the content crucial for their success

And he drew on an unlikely, given his relationship with and attitude towards many News Corp publications, example of someone who’s being hard done by here:

Take the example of President Trump. He has written many successful books, in particular, The Art of the Deal, which is still reporting notable sales. Is it right that his books should be consumed by an AI engine, which then profits from his thoughts by cannibalizing his concepts, thus undermining future sales of his book. Suddenly, The Art of the Deal has become the art of the steel. Is it fair that creators are having their works per Lloyd? Is it just that the President of the United States is being ripped off?

Battle engaged 

News Corp will not waver here, Thomson suggests:

I need to ensure that the content ecosystem remains healthy that there is a vast range of varied and verifiable sources and that a deeply derivative work AI does not become the default pathway to digital decay. In the meantime, we will fight to protect the intellectual property of our authors and journalists and continue to win and to sue companies that violate the most basic property rights.

He’s quite prepared to come to an agreement, but also not afraid to wield a very big stick, is the bottom line:

We’re in the midst of advanced negotiations with several AI companies. So it is clear that many of them have come to recognize that the purchase of IP is as important as the acquisition of semiconductors or the securing stable energy sources. And in the end, IP powers AI. Now these are important deals, particularly for our News Media Properties and Dow Jones. And there is, as I mentioned, a mix of wooing and suing for the former, but we will never shy away from protecting our property rise.

All of this can make for some interesting bedfellows. After initial hostilities, last year News Corp signed a multi-year agreement with OpenAI to allow the latter to display content from the former’s mastheads in response to user questions and to allow the company to enhance its products. Meanwhile OpenAI was shaken by the sudden public profile gained by China’s lower cost, open source DeepSeek, resulting in its releasing a couple of its own ‘open’ models to compete.

For its part, News Corp in February banned its employees from using China’s DeepSeek AI due to concerns from its cybersecurity teams about privacy and data leakage. It’s also very wary of the idea that DeepSeek might tap into OpenAI’s data and by implication into News Corp’s own IP in the process, leading to Thomson threatening:

If it is the case that DeepSeek has been using Open AI’s information set in other words, more DeepSneak than DeepSeek, then they too will be hearing from us in the near future.

My take

The battles go on – and will for a long time yet.