New York Times Chairman’s Speech: How Should the Media Survive in the Age of AI? I Urge the Industry to Stand Up and Push Back

The Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, delivered an opening speech at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference in Marseille on June 1, characterizing AI companies' use of news training models as "blatant intellectual property theft," revealing that The Times has spent over $20 million suing OpenAI and Perplexity, and calling on the global media industry "to no longer remain silent."
(Background summary: CNN sues Perplexity for copyright infringement: 17k articles copied verbatim, bypassing paywalls)
(Additional background: Google Search undergoes the biggest transformation in history: repositioning Search as an AI-powered one-stop portal)

Table of Contents

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• Four raw materials, three paid, one stolen
• $11 trillion industry, only 0.5% goes to content creators
• One newspaper closes every three days
• "Killed by its own copies"
• "AI companies are closer to Napster, not libraries"
• Media too silent, too passive, too fragmented
• News must be uniquely attractive on its own

Key Highlights

• A.G. Sulzberger accuses AI companies of "blatant intellectual property theft" at the Marseille WAN-IFRA conference, with The Times having spent over $20 million suing OpenAI and Perplexity
• Six leading AI companies have a combined market value of $11 trillion, but less than 0.5% of the investment is returned to content creators; in 20 years, the U.S. has lost 75% of its journalists and closed over 3,000 newspapers
• Sulzberger calls for global media unity to push legislation, require AI crawlers to identify themselves, and compares AI companies to "pirate music platform Napster"

Earlier this month, at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference in Marseille, France, A.G. Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times, did not exchange pleasantries with the audience. His first words to the global media industry were accusations against AI.

"Tech giants are strip-mining news websites without permission or compensation." ("Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation.")

The speech was titled "The Uncertain Future of AI, News, and the Public Square." Over 40 minutes, Sulzberger dissected the issue with remarkable clarity. Here is his argument, in his own words.

Four raw materials, three paid, one stolen

Sulzberger breaks down the construction of AI models into four raw materials.

• Talent (engineers)
• Computing power (infrastructure)
• Energy (electricity)
• "Data"

He pauses notably on the word "data," because in the context of AI companies, "data" truly means books, movies, music, and news reports.

The first three raw materials are purchased at market prices. Engineers earn over a million dollars annually, data centers and electricity contracts cost billions. But for the fourth, they choose not to pay.

He quotes OpenAI’s own words: "It is impossible to train state-of-the-art AI models without using copyrighted material."

Microsoft’s vice president also admits: "High-quality content can significantly improve response quality."

Sulzberger makes it clear: "What determines AI quality is not architecture, not hyperparameters, not optimization choices. It’s your dataset, and nothing else."

AI industry players know news is valuable; they admit it, and then they take it.

$11 trillion industry, only 0.5% goes to content creators

Sulzberger lays out the figures to highlight the contrast.

The six leading AI companies have a combined market value of $11 trillion, three times France’s GDP. By 2025, private AI investments in the U.S. will reach $350 billion, still accelerating in 2026. The global creative industry employs over 50 million people, with an annual output of about $12 trillion.

Yet, the compensation these AI companies provide to content creators is less than 0.5% of their investments.

He characterizes this as "blatant intellectual property theft on an unprecedented scale."

He then shifts focus to his own newspaper, noting that in 2025 alone, The Times published nearly 500k articles, costing over $17k. With over 70 reporters stationed in Ukraine, over 175 years, the paper has accumulated 20 million original articles.

The Times is the largest single proprietary content source in major AI training datasets.

One newspaper closes every three days

Next comes a series of numbers that require no explanation.

Over the past twenty years, the U.S. has lost 75% of its journalists. More than 3,000 newspapers have shut down, and now one closes every three days. Newspaper ad revenue has plummeted 80%. Meta’s ad revenue is eight times that of all newspapers combined.

AI search accelerates this depletion. "Getting a Google user to click a link now is ten times harder than ten years ago." Meanwhile, traffic sent to news sites by other AI models is 96% lower than Google Search, and the largest newspapers have seen traffic drop over 45% amid the AI race.

Sulzberger states: "I worry we are heading toward a future with fewer and fewer reporters, fewer and fewer doing those costly, difficult original reports."

The decline of local news is not just a commercial issue. He cites research showing that communities losing local news experience declining trust, reduced civic participation, increased isolation, and rising corruption. He calls this "a tragedy for the public sphere."

"Killed by its own copies"

Sulzberger quotes Canadian author Margaret Atwood to describe the current situation: "Killed by its own copies."

The irony of this metaphor is that the "copies" are often not even good.

Research by the European Broadcasting Union finds that nearly 50% of mainstream AI assistants' answers to news questions "seriously distort" facts. Google and Apple have made "significant errors" when rewriting news headlines with AI. Perplexity’s bot once falsely claimed conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated, while Grok claimed he was still alive.

The most absurd detail is that when Microsoft launched its AI assistant Copilot, the disclaimer read: "For entertainment or reference purposes only. Do not rely on Copilot for important decisions."

A product claiming to replace news, yet instructing users not to take it seriously.

"AI companies are closer to Napster, not libraries"

Sulzberger chooses a metaphor everyone understands.

"These companies are parasitic, more akin to Napster, the old piracy platform."

He then names them one by one.

OpenAI and Microsoft are the main targets of The Times’ lawsuit, filed in December 2023. The lawsuit has been ongoing for over two and a half years, costing more than $20 million. Most news organizations lack the resources for such a prolonged battle.

Meta trained large language models using "a notorious illegal pirated book database."

Perplexity "openly disregards" website restrictions on crawling, using "hidden, unannounced crawlers" to bypass paywalls and distribute content.

Anthropic, often touted as a company committed to ethical AI, "refuses to pay for news."

Google increasingly answers user questions directly in search results rather than directing to original news sources. Still, Google’s referral traffic remains the highest among all AI platforms, not because it performs better, but because "competitors are worse."

Sulzberger concludes with a statistic: about 30% of AI crawlers violate explicit website access restrictions.

Media too silent, too passive, too fragmented

In the latter half of his speech, he shifts from accusations to calls for mobilization.

"Our industry is too silent, too passive, too fragmented in the face of AI revolution abuses."

He proposes four actions:

• First: Uphold intellectual property rights and insist these rights be respected
• Second: Carefully handle AI licensing agreements to ensure fair compensation and meaningful control
• Third: Push for legislation to establish a four-layer defense, including robust IP protections, mandatory crawler identification, transparency in news usage, and legal accountability for AI-generated defamatory content
• Fourth: Cross-industry unity, pooling resources, submitting amicus briefs, and collaborating with entertainment, music, publishing, and other creative sectors

"We cannot let AI cheerleaders dominate public discourse."

"We cannot stand by as AI companies attempt to permanently dismantle our rights to control our content."

News must be uniquely attractive on its own

Sulzberger does not place all the blame on AI; he also issues a new-era demand to his fellow media colleagues.

He says over-reliance on platform traffic is a dead end; media must rely on themselves. "In a world mediated by AI, to become a destination, your news must be uniquely attractive on its own."

He recommends four responsible yet bold actions: use AI responsibly but innovate boldly, build direct relationships with readers instead of relying on platforms, focus on original reporting rather than aggregation and clickbait, and explain to the public why news matters.

He also makes a distinction: "I am not saying AI, or the tech giants controlling this technology, are inherently evil or malicious."

"But shutting the door on a powerful new technology is a failed approach."

The implication is that the media should embrace AI advancements.

His final words are quiet, without anger, only a warning:

Even if everything seems fine now, remember, these early waves foreshadow an impending tsunami. We cannot be so naive this time. Information wants to be free, but it also wants to be expensive, because it is too valuable.

On average, every three days, a media outlet closes forever worldwide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does A.G. Sulzberger accuse AI companies of stealing?

Sulzberger accuses AI companies of large-scale use of copyrighted content like news, books, and music to train models without permission or payment, calling it "blatant intellectual property theft." The Times has spent over $20 million suing OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity.

How does Sulzberger suggest news media should respond to AI threats?

He proposes four actions: uphold intellectual property rights, carefully handle AI licensing, push for legislation including crawler identification and transparency, and unite across creative industries. He also advises focusing on creating "uniquely attractive" original content.