One of the world’s largest media empires has called artificial intelligence and handlers of their stolen content “pirates” and “crass kleptomaniacs”, promising to expose their “murky, illegal behaviour”.
News Corporation singled out AI answer engines Perplexity and Brave, with whom it is embroiled in ongoing legal battles, but also pledged to take the fight to “some of the world’s better-known companies” who deal with them in a chest-beating yearly earnings report.
“Our claims against Brave focus on their data for AI products, which are legally gormlessly sourced and repurposed copyrighted material,” News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said.
“Companies who buy from these pirates should know that they are in possession of stolen goods … some of the world’s better-known companies are clients of these crass kleptomaniacs, and better-known companies should know better.”
The media titan vowed in February to guard assets with a crocodile, shark- and lawyer-infested moat as part of a “woo or sue strategy” for doing business with AI.
“As for litigation, it’s far from over,” Mr Thomson said on Thursday.
The sprawling conglomerate – owner of Australian mastheads the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail and The Australian – positioned itself on the front line of the fight against machine-generated “slop”.
“Without our journalists, our authors, our data, our brands, and our professional expertise, users would be drowning in a slimy sea of AI slop, a cauldron of content crap,” Mr Thomson said.
The self-styled AI inputs company reported it has hauled more AI firms to the negotiating table, having entered advanced discussions with several “honourable” companies.
“There are significant deals in the pipeline,” Mr Thomson said.
“We know how to create peerless content, and these companies know how interaction with content. We are creators, they are savvy distributors.”
It has already signed deals with Meta and OpenAI to let bots train on News Corp content.
The media titan proclaimed business was booming, reporting earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were up 31 per cent in the year to June 30 to $US423 million ($A$600 million).
Its fourth-quarter revenue of $US2.34 billion ($A3.32 billion) eclipsed Wall Street forecasts, jumping 11 per cent from a year prior, while its net income from continuing operations in the three months to June 30 almost tripled to $US230 million ($A$326 million).
Information services behemoth Dow Jones remained the jewel in News Corp’s crown, but its real estate and book publishing divisions also posted strong growth.
Publisher Harper Collins was helped along by US Vice President JD Vance’s memoir Communion, and the television adaptation of steamy ice hockey romance Heated Rivalry, the company declared.
“It was certainly a challenge for many media companies, but News Corporation reported record revenues, record margins, and record profits on a continuing operations basis,” Mr Thomson said.
Underlying earnings in its news division slumped by nine per cent in the year to June 30 as print advertising sagged, the FIFA World Cup drove up broadcasting costs and the company launched new masthead California Post.
News Corp Australia’s mastheads had a better year, gaining 8000 readers to land just shy of one million subscribers, but its digital readership shrunk marginally to 1.16 million.
By comparison, the Wall Street Journal alone had 4.8 million subscribers across its digital and print editions.
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