MARSEILLE –The publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, launched a sweeping attack on the leaders of the artificial intelligence revolution on Monday, accusing them of operating a "parasitic" business model built on the mass theft of copyrighted journalism that risks destabilising democracies worldwide.
In his opening address at the World News Media Congress in Marseille, Sulzberger warned that AI companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic are systematically "strip-mining" news websites without permission or payment. He argued that their actions are not only illegal but are actively dismantling the economic foundation of the news industry.
"Our profession has been too quiet, too passive and too fragmented in the face of abuses by the AI companies," Sulzberger told an audience of news leaders from over 60 countries. "I'm warning that AI companies are making choices that violate settled law, threaten the viability of creative work, and appear likely to cause a great deal of unnecessary harm."
Sulzberger revealed that The Times has already spent over $20 million on a two-and-a-half-year lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, with similar litigation filed against Perplexity. He noted that most news organisations lack the resources for such a fight, even as the combined valuation of the six leading AI companies has reached $11 trillion—more than three times France's GDP.
The publisher detailed a new, more damaging wave of disruption in which AI models now answer questions directly, making users 10 times less likely to click through to the publisher's website. Data cited by Sulzberger shows that traffic to major newspapers has dropped by more than 45% over the last four years, while AI competitors send referral traffic at a rate 96% lower than traditional search.
"It would be 'impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,'" Sulzberger said, quoting OpenAI’s own admission. He contrasted the billions spent on chips and energy with the paltry sums offered to creators, noting that less than 0.01% of AI investment appears to be going to the people and companies whose data powers the technology.
Sulzberger dismissed tech industry arguments that their actions are protected by "fair use" or necessary for national security, calling them arguments that "do not withstand scrutiny." He urged publishers to stand up for their intellectual property rights, push legislators for transparency and accountability, and unite with other creative industries.
"When a local news organisation fails, people in a community start to trust each other less and hate each other more," Sulzberger warned. "A future in which a crucial wellspring of a healthy society and a stable democracy—the truth, understanding, and accountability provided by original journalism—continues to dry up."
The tech companies have not yet issued a formal response to the speech, but have consistently argued in court and in public that their use of publicly available data for AI training falls under fair use doctrines and drives innovation.
### Feature: The Heist of the Public Square
**Inside A. G. Sulzberger’s fight to save journalism from the AI ‘tsunami’**
For a moment in Marseille, the abstract debate about the future of artificial intelligence snapped into sharp focus. A. G. Sulzberger, the 45-year-old publisher of a 175-year-old newspaper, stood on stage and used a word you don't often hear in polite business circles: theft.
Not just once, but methodically, relentlessly. He described a world where the most powerful corporations in human history are not competing with journalism, but quietly consuming it from the inside out, like "strip-mining" a mountainside for its most precious ore. The ore, in this case, is the truth—painstakingly dug up by reporters in 155 countries, at a cost of over $2 billion last year alone.
Sulzberger’s speech at the World News Media Congress was more than a corporate keynote; it was a eulogy for a dying compact. He recalled the "so-called open web," where a tacit deal existed: tech platforms took the lion's share of ad dollars, but in return, they sent readers. It wasn’t perfect, he seemed to say, but it was a living, breathing ecosystem.
Today, that ecosystem is being replaced by a black box. You type a question into a chatbot; it gives you an answer. You never leave. The publisher gets nothing. Not the ad revenue. Not the subscription. Not even the credit. One study found that OpenAI credited its original news sources in just 1% of its responses.
This is the "murder by replica," as sci-fi author Margaret Atwood put it—a phrase Sulzberger borrowed with grim relish. The replicas, he argued, are becoming more confident and less reliable. He cited AI models falsely reporting the assassination of a political activist who was alive, and confidently inventing headlines. Yet, alarmingly, a growing number of people find these chatbots more "trustworthy" than the journalists who risk their lives in Ukraine or at city council meetings back home.
What makes Sulzberger’s warning uniquely chilling is not just the threat to jobs, but to social sanity. He linked the collapse of local news to a rise in corruption, a decline in civic engagement, and a surge in mutual distrust. "When a local news organisation fails, people start to hate each other more," he said. AI, by replacing that shared, fact-based record with a personalised, unaccountable, and often hallucinating oracle, threatens to accelerate this civic decay.
The publisher is not a Luddite. He proudly notes that *The Times* uses AI responsibly to help with editing and distribution. He believes in the technology's power for good. But he draws a hard line at the "original sin" of taking without asking.
As he concluded, Sulzberger offered a quiet, radical thought. The digital age was built on the idea that "information wants to be free." But the full quote, from tech philosopher Stewart Brand, is that information also "wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable." For four years, the AI giants have exploited only the first half of that sentence.
The question Sulzberger left hanging in the air in Marseille was whether newsrooms—smaller, weaker, and more fragmented than ever—can force them to respect the second half before the tsunami he predicted finally makes landfall. The answer, he seemed to say, will determine not just the fate of newspapers, but the very shape of the public square.
