Profits at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp might have dropped 75 per cent in the year to the end of June — to $187 million (€170 million) — but dollar signs still seemed to be flashing in the eyes of the company’s chief executive Robert Thomson this week.
The glint was all courtesy of artificial intelligence (AI). The key Murdoch lieutenant got the usual media earnings release fare about stringent cost controls, challenging macro conditions and currency headwinds over and done with, then hailed what he described as “sound reasons for optimism”.
These included the fact that for the first time, digital media has accounted for more than 50 per cent of News Corp’s full-year revenues. This, he said, marked a “profound transformation” in its business over the past decade. Only cynics would note that the “old media” side of the company has transformed, by declining, to a more obvious extent than the digital side has transformed by exploding.
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In any case, Murdoch (92) looks set to live long enough to enjoy the twin benefits of AI on his empire’s bottom line — or the prospect of them, at least.
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Digital revenue momentum is “surely gathering pace” in the age of generative AI, according to Thomson, with the company believing this “presents a remarkable opportunity to create a new stream of revenues while allowing us to reduce costs across the business”.
News Corp, he added, was “already in active negotiations” in its attempt to seek payment from generative AI companies on the use of its content and data to train AI.
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Journalists, meanwhile, will rightly be wary of the cost-reduction potential cited. While several high-profile media companies have now either begun experimenting with AI-generated content or indicated they will do so, News Corp is one of the largest to embrace it.
As early as January this year, a News Corp Australia executive revealed that the division was using generative AI to produce 3,000 local news items a week on subjects such as traffic, weather and fuel prices. That’s some output.
With the role of — and need for — human employees in this brave new media world seeming increasingly uncertain, these developments are, indeed, remarkable.
