Rupert Murdoch's Empire Just Sold Its News to Meta for $150 Million — To Feed AI

News Corp, the media empire behind the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a bunch of big Australian newspapers, just signed a deal worth up to $50 million per year to let Meta scrape all their content and feed it to AI.

Let that sink in for a second. One of the world's biggest news companies is now openly saying its main value is as raw material for AI training. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson literally called his company an "input company" at a tech conference, comparing news content to semiconductors and data centers. You know, just another cog in the AI machine.

This comes on top of a $250 million deal News Corp already has with OpenAI, signed back in 2024. Thomson says he regularly chats with both Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg on WhatsApp. His strategy? "Woo or sue." Either make a deal with AI companies or take them to court if they steal your content.

Here's the thing that should make every journalist nervous: if news organizations see themselves as "inputs" rather than, you know, the people who inform the public, what happens to actual journalism? When your business model is selling words to robots instead of readers, the incentives start to look very different.

The three-year Meta deal covers News Corp's US and UK publications but not their Australian outlets. At least someone drew a line somewhere.

As reported by The Guardian.

Source: The Guardian