Meta Agrees to Pay News Corp Rp850 Billion for AI Training

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly reached a content-licensing agreement with media giant News Corp. The move marks a major manoeuvre by Meta in the global race in artificial intelligence. Under this lucrative deal, Meta will gain legal access to train its AI models using News Corp’s archives and journalistic content. According to KompasTekno, citing the Wall Street Journal, the contract value is said to exceed $50 million per year (about Rp850 billion). The deal covers News Corp’s media portfolio, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times of London, and The Australian. According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the contract—worth trillions of rupiah when tallied over several years—would not only grant Meta the right to use news text to train its Large Language Model (LLM) Llama. For News Corp, the deal represents a strategic victory. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson is widely recognised as one of the most vocal figures in the media industry; he has consistently argued that AI companies should pay fair compensation for the journalistic products they use. Previously, Thomson had strongly criticised unauthorised scraping by AI developers, calling it an existential threat to the established business model of journalism. Last year, OpenAI had already aggressively secured a series of similar licensing deals with several media giants. They are reported to have signed a multi-year contract with News Corp worth $250 million over five years. In addition to News Corp, OpenAI has partnered with other major publishers such as Axel Springer (the parent of Politico and Business Insider), The Associated Press (AP), the Financial Times, and Le Monde. Initially, Meta appeared reluctant to pay for news licences, given that it had previously removed the ‘Facebook News’ feature and reduced the occurrence of news links in users’ News Feeds. However, to ensure their AI assistant remains relevant, accurate, and free from copyright infringement lawsuits, Meta apparently recognises that paying compensation for quality journalism is a price that cannot be avoided. Quoting the WSJ, as of press time, neither Meta nor News Corp’s official representatives had commented on the financial details of the licensing deal.