New York Times Publisher Accuses AI Giants of 'Brazen Theft'
A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, accused major AI companies of systematically stealing copyrighted journalism without permission or payment. Speaking at the World News Media Congress in Marseille on Monday, he called their business model "parasitic" and warned that it threatens the viability of news organizations worldwide.
Sulzberger named OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic as the primary offenders. He said these companies are "strip-mining" news websites to train generative AI and large language models without compensating publishers or journalists.
The Economic Toll
Traffic to major newspapers has dropped more than 45% over the past four years, Sulzberger said. AI models now answer user questions directly, making readers 10 times less likely to visit a publisher's website. Traditional search engines send referral traffic at rates 96% higher than AI competitors.
The six leading AI companies are now valued at $11 trillion combined-more than three times France's GDP. Yet less than 0.01% of AI investment appears to flow to the creators and publishers whose work trains these systems.
The Legal Battle
The Times has spent over $20 million on a two-and-a-half-year lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The publisher has filed similar litigation against Perplexity. Most news organizations, Sulzberger noted, lack the resources to mount such legal challenges.
OpenAI has acknowledged that training modern AI models without copyrighted material would be "impossible." Tech companies defend their practices as protected by fair use doctrine and necessary for innovation. Sulzberger dismissed these arguments as failing legal scrutiny.
Broader Implications
Sulzberger warned that the decline of local news organizations erodes community trust. "When a local news organisation fails, people in a community start to trust each other less and hate each other more," he said.
He called on creatives and publishers to unite in defending intellectual property rights, demanding transparency from AI companies, and pushing legislators for accountability.
The tech companies have not issued formal responses to the speech but have consistently argued in court that their use of publicly available data falls within fair use protections.
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