The media conglomerate News Corp has struck a major AI licensing deal with tech giant Meta worth $50 million a year.
The deal will let Meta train its AI models on content, and retrieve up-to-date real-time information, from News Corp’s major publications such as The Sun, New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
This lets highly relevant content surface in Meta’s conversational AI tools.
News Corp, which is owned by Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, reported through WSJ that the licensing deal will run for at least three years.
This deal adds to News Corp’s existing agreements with AI companies, having signed a content licensing agreement worth $250 million over five years with rival AI model OpenAI last year.
Despite this, some of News Corp’s publications have sued AI companies for using content without permission or payment. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright issues and News Corp subsidiaries Dow Jones and NYP Holdings sued Perplexity and accused the company of “freeriding” on its “protected content.”
“Woo and Sue”
When GenAI tools first came onto the scene in 2022, it became evident that publishers were having their content taken, often without permission or compensation, to power conversational responses. Online users turning to AI chatbots over publisher websites to get information is also fuelling a major decline in website traffic.
In response, many news outlets have entered lucrative AI licensing deals with AI companies, to get compensation for content already used and to make up for some of the revenue lost through declining traffic.
On Monday, News Corp’s CEO Robert Thomson briefly spoke about the Meta deal in a presentation at Morgan Stanley’s annual Technology, Media & Telecom conference.
The dual strategy of suing and entering licensing deals was dubbed “woo and sue” by Thomson. He said at the conference: “We’d like you to be our partner. But if you’re stealing our stuff, we are going to sue you … we’re coming for you. I mean, we can see you doing it. We’ll get round to you eventually. So there’ll be a discount for those who hand themselves, and there’ll be a penalty for those that resist.”
Meta has also sought to achieve licensing deals with major publications, and in recent months has struck agreements with USA Today, People, CNN and Fox News, as revealed in an Axios report.
