News Corp boss Robert Thomson called on the White House to crack down on AI companies from swiping copyrighted material — warning President Trump that even his best-selling book “The Art of the Deal” was ripped off.
“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?” Thomson said.
“Suddenly, ‘The Art of the Deal’ has become The Art of the Steal.”
Thomson sounded the alarm about AI companies profiting at the expense of publishers and authors, including Trump, after The Post’s parent company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings Tuesday.
In June, Meta successfully defended itself in a federal lawsuit brought by several authors that accused the company of training its Llama artificial intelligence system on copyrighted books without permission, though the presiding judge warned that the victory doesn’t establish the legality of such practices.
The case involved claims that Meta used over 190,000 protected works, including “The Art of the Deal.”
“Is it fair that creators are having their works purloined? Is it just that the President of the United States is being ripped off?” Thomson asked.
News Corp – whose properties also include the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and book publisher HarperCollins – is suing AI startup Perplexity for allegedly stealing content to train its language model.
The media executive said the voracious appetite of the AI firms to train their bots on proprietary content without paying for it risks eroding America’s edge over rival nations.
“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit,” he said.
“To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.”
Last month, the Trump administration rolled out its “AI Action Plan” which aims to accelerate innovation through increased R&D funding and support for open-source AI while rapidly expanding AI infrastructure with fast-tracked permits and workforce programs.
The plan promotes deregulation and centralized federal control while opposing what it calls “woke” or ideologically biased models, mandating only “neutral” AI in federal procurement.
Thomson, however, also pushed for the AI giants — which include Meta, Google, OpenAI and Amazon — to splash a fraction of the billions they have earmarked for infrasctructure to fuel their rapid ascent.
“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,” Thomson said.
Beyond the media industry’s financial concerns, Thomson expressed worry about the long-term health of the content ecosystem.
He argued that AI companies need to ensure diverse and reliable sources of information continue to thrive, rather than creating what he termed a “deeply derivative” system that could lead to broader problems in digital information quality.
“It has also become clearer over the past year that discerning audiences crave content that is profound and purposeful and pithy amidst a morass of mediocrity and mendacity,” Thomson observed.
He added that writers, journalists, and other creators understand both the responsibility and opportunity they face in the current AI-dominated landscape.
News Corp has been among the most vocal media companies in demanding compensation from AI firms that use their content for training purposes.
In May of last year, the media giant struck a landmark, multiyear partnership with OpenAI, giving the ChatGpt maker access to news content from many of its flagship publications for use in training and servicing of its AI products.
Separately, the company filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI last year, accusing the startup of systematically stealing copyrighted news content.
Perplexity AI has denied the claim and disputed News Corp’s characterization of how its technology works.
Thomson pledged that News Corp would continue both courtship and legal action as strategies for protecting their content creators.
“In the meantime, we will fight to protect the intellectual property of our authors and journalists, and continue to woo and to sue companies that violate the most basic property rights,” Thomson said.
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