News Corp chief Robert Thomson warns of rising threat of AI to the media industry

Robert Thomson has warned of the serious dangers posed by artificial intelligence that could jeopardise the future of journalism across the world.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson said journalism content is under serious threat and it is being harvested, scraped and used to train engines that ultimately undermines the work of reporters.

Speaking at the International News Media Association (INMA) World Congress of News Media in New York on Thursday local time, Mr Thomson said it was critical for media outlets to grasp the “potential opportunities and the real dangers” of artificial intelligence.

“So having wrestled with a paucity of payments for actual information, journalism is now grappling with a sudden surfeit of artificial information,” he told the conference.

“Our collective IP is under threat and for which we should argue vociferously for compensation – the emerging picture is what you might call a tech triptych.”

Mr Thomson has spoken publicly several times in recent months around his concerns relating to AI and its threat to journalism and warned during his latest address that “our content is being harvested and scraped and otherwise ingested to train AI engines”.

“Secondly, individual stories will be surfaced in specific searches,” he said.

“Thirdly, our content will be synthesised and presented as distinct when it is actually an extracting of editorial essence.

“These are super snippets, containing all the effort and insight of great journalism but designed so the reader will never visit a journalism website, thus fatally undermining that journalism.”

The discussion was held with INMA’s digital product initiative lead, Robert Whitehead, who said Mr Thomson had been “one of the global leaders in pushing digital platforms to pay for the use of content” and News Corp, publisher of The Australian, was one of the only companies to secure a deal with Google.

As a leader in pushing digital platforms to pay for the use of content, News Corp, publisher of The Australian, was one of the only companies to secure a deal with Google. Picture: Alain Jocard/AFP

“This is all public information, in Australia, in the United States and in the United Kingdom on what has been described as favourable terms for News Corp,” Mr Whitehead said.

“No one else got anything else like that”.

In 2021 laws passed under the News Bargaining Media Code that enabled tech giants including Meta (previously Facebook) to pay Australian news outlets for content published on its sites.

Mr Thomson said: “I do worry about the third part of the tech triptych, which when it becomes impossible to identify the origins of the journalism, your ability to control its use is obviously undermined”.

“I do think there will be more deals in more countries, based on the leverage that legislation in another country has granted. I would encourage news organisations around the world to use that leverage,” he said.

He highlighted the downfall of generative AI – which is able to generate automated content by implementing several words into a search engine – and said “it’s retrospective”.
“We have contemporary news, it needs to be contemporised with content and that’s the advantage that everybody here has because otherwise, it’s just Wikipedia on amphetamines,” Mr Thomson said.

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman, Rod Sims, said the government needs to take immediate action to regulate the digital platforms due to the surge in generative AI - which at this stage is free.

“Just as there’s no regulation of digital platforms there’s no regulation of generative AI,” he said. “We didn’t know a lot about it until 12 months ago.

“In the case of the media you won’t even know where the article has come from and the media won’t get paid for any content.” He said the ACCC’s recommendations from last year needed to be implemented which focus on competition and consumer issues connected to digital platforms.

During Mr Thomson’s address at the INMA he also spoke of the detention of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, 31, who was arrested on March 29 on suspicion of espionage in Russia and he could face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty.

“Evan is in the midst of his 58th day of wrongful incarceration,” he said.

“That perverse detention has this week been extended by another three months and so the fight for Evan’s freedom is far from over.”