New York Times Publisher Warns That AI Companies Are Making Choices That ‘Violate Settled Law’ and Could Cause a ‘Great Deal of Unnecessary Harm’

A.G. Sulzberger made AI the center of his keynote address to the World News Media Congress

By Corbin Bolies

Corbin Bolies

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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned that AI companies were making choices that could lead to “a great deal of unnecessary harm” to the news business and the public’s access to reliable sources, in a speech delivered during the World News Media Congress in France on Monday.

Companies leading the development of generative-AI systems — including OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic and Google — are “failing to embrace a core responsibility” of their control over the data fueling the technology’s development, Sulzberger said: making sure the public has access to “trustworthy” news. He pinned the cause on the companies’ “hijacking” of the public’s attention, spurred by the content they’ve trained their large language models on, including news articles. Such training has led multiple news organizations, including the Times itself, to sue companies such as OpenAI and Perplexity for copyright infringement.

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