News Corp CEO vows to profit from lawsuits against AI content thieves
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson announced plans to sue AI firms and their customers for using the publisher’s scraped articles, framing the legal battles as a new revenue stream.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, used the recent earnings briefing to outline an aggressive legal strategy aimed at companies that scrape the publisher’s news for artificial-intelligence training. He pledged to sue both the AI providers and the downstream buyers of the appropriated material, describing the resulting lawsuits as a lucrative revenue source. The latest target is the Brave browser, which News Corp alleges used masked crawlers to harvest articles and then sold them to AI firms, prompting a counter-suit seeking injunctions and up to $150,000 per violation.
Thomson warned that any organization purchasing such content is effectively in possession of stolen goods and could face damages. He called on Canadian corporate leaders to assess their exposure to stolen intellectual property and emphasized that ignorance does not excuse the use of pirated news. The broader message positions the legal fight as essential to preserving sustainable journalism in the AI era.
Why it matters
The story shows how major publishers are turning legal action into profit while confronting AI-driven copyright infringement.
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