Discurso do presidente do conselho do New York Times: Como os meios de comunicação devem sobreviver na era da IA? Aconselho a indústria a se levantar e resistir

The New York Times Chairman and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger delivered an opening speech at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference in Marseille on June 1, characterizing the use of news training models by AI companies as "blatant intellectual property theft," revealing that The Times has spent over $20 million to sue OpenAI and Perplexity, and calling on the global media industry "to no longer remain silent."
(Background summary: CNN sues Perplexity for copyright infringement: 17,000 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, 0.5% to content creators
• One newspaper closes every three days
• "Killed by its own copies"
• "AI companies closer to Napster, not libraries"
• Media too silent, too passive, too fragmented
• News must be uniquely attractive

Key Highlights

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

Earlier this month, at the Marseille WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference in 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."

(The title of his speech was "AI, the News Industry, and the Uncertain Future of the Public Square.") Over 40 minutes, Sulzberger dissected the issue very clearly. Here is his reasoning, 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 operators know news is valuable; they admit it, and then they take it.

$11 trillion industry, 0.5% 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 US 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, The New York Times published nearly 500,000 articles, costing over $200 million. With over 70 reporters stationed in Ukraine, the paper has accumulated 20 million original articles over 175 years.

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

One newspaper closes every three days

Next, a series of numbers that require no explanation.

Over the past twenty years, the US has lost 75% of its journalists. Over 3,000 newspapers have shut down, and now one closes every three days. Newspaper ad revenue has plummeted by 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." Traffic to news sites from other AI models is 96% lower than from Google Search, and the biggest newspapers have seen traffic drop over 45% amid AI competition.

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

The decline of local news is not just a commercial issue; research shows that communities without local news experience declining trust, reduced civic participation, increased isolation, and rising corruption. He calls this "a tragedy of 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 even not good enough.

Research by the European Broadcasting Union found that nearly 50% of mainstream AI assistants give "seriously distorted" answers to news questions. Google and Apple make "significant errors" when rewriting news headlines with AI. Perplexity’s bot 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 asking users not to take it seriously.

"AI companies closer to Napster, not libraries"

Sulzberger chose a metaphor everyone understands.

"These companies are parasitic, more like Napster—the old illegal music platform."

He then names them one by one.

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

Meta trained its large language models on "a notorious illegal database of pirated books."

Perplexity "openly disregards" website crawling restrictions, 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 instead of directing to original news sources. Even so, Google’s referral traffic remains the highest among all AI platforms, not because it does better, but because "competitors are worse."

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

Media too silent, too passive, too fragmented

In the latter part of his speech, the tone shifts from accusation to mobilization.

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

He makes four calls to action:

• 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 four layers of safeguards, including robust IP protection, mandatory crawler identification, transparency in news usage, and legal liability for AI-generated defamatory content
• Fourth: Unite across industries, concentrate resources, submit amicus briefs, and collaborate with the film, music, and publishing industries

"We cannot let AI cheerleaders dominate the public discourse."

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

News must be uniquely attractive

Sulzberger does not place all the blame on AI; he also issues a new era’s demand to the media peers present.

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."

He suggests four actions: responsibly use AI while boldly innovating, 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 bad."

"But shutting the door on a powerful new technology is a recipe for failure."

This means 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 herald 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 around the world permanently closes its doors.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Sulzberger accuses AI companies of using copyrighted content such as news, books, and music without permission or payment to train models, calling it "blatant intellectual property theft." The Times has spent over $20 million to sue OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity.

How does Sulzberger suggest news media should respond to the AI threat?

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