News Corp warns Trump AI is eviscerating sales of The Art of the Deal
The company, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owns dozens of newspapers and TV channels around the world including the Wall Street Journal, the Times (in the UK), the Australian and the New York Post. News Corp also owns book publisher HarperCollins, which has published three of Trump's books, though his best-known title, The Art of the Deal, was published by Random House.
Still, the company appeared keen to warn Trump about the impact AI is having on publishing.
'The AI age must cherish the value of intellectual property if we are collectively to realize our potential,' News Corp said in a statement with its fourth-quarter earnings report. 'Even the president of the United States is not immune to blatant theft. The president's books are still reporting healthy sales, but are being consumed by AI engines which profit from his thoughts by cannibalizing his concepts, thus undermining future sales of his books.
'Suddenly, The Art of the Deal has become The Art of the Steal.'
Media outlets have sued AI companies, including OpenAI, operator of ChatGPT, for using their content to train AI models without permission. In May, a federal judge rejected OpenAI's request to dismiss a lawsuit from the New York Times over its usage of the newspaper's content. Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post sued Perplexity AI in October over similar copyright claims.
News Corp's message to Trump also comes after the White House last month announced Trump's 'AI action plan' that would see the loosening of AI regulations that had been put in place under the Biden administration.
In an earnings call Tuesday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said that the company is in the middle of 'advanced negotiations with several AI companies'.
'It's clear that many of them have come to recognize that the purchase of [intellectual property] is as important as the acquisition of semiconductors or the securing of stable energy sources,' he said, noting that it's a mix of 'wooing and suing'.
'We prefer the former, but we will never shy away from protecting our property rights,' he said.
The warning comes at a tense moment between News Corp and the White House. Trump sued the Wall Street Journal after the newspaper published a report that the president had once sent Jeffrey Epstein an intimate birthday message that included a sexually suggestive drawing of a woman. Trump claimed that the report was false and amounted to libel. The newspaper has requested a judge dismiss the case.
Murdoch, who also owns Fox News, was once friendly with Trump, though relations soured during the president's third presidential campaign.
The company beat fourth-quarter expectations with Tuesday's earnings announcement, largely due to a rise in digital subscriptions from Dow Jones, which houses the company's business publications like the Wall Street Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch. On Monday, News Corp announced it will launch a sister tabloid to the New York Post in California, called the California Post, in early 2026.
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