Meta has held talks in recent months with news organizations including Axel Springer, Fox Corp and News Corp – The Post’s owner – over content licensing deals for its artificial intelligence tools, according to a report.
The company currently offers several AI tools, including a chatbot called Meta AI Assistant that is embedded across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The discussions have revolved around licensing news and other content for use across its AI bots, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
Some of the talks are early and might not result in deals, according to the report.
But it still represents a major shift for Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant, which has backed away from paying for news content in recent years.
Fox Corp and News Corp share common ownership.
Meta did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Years ago, the company signed deals worth tens of millions of dollars to include content from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal – also owned by News Corp – in its News Tab.
But in 2022, Meta announced it was phasing out those payments to publishers. A spokeswoman at the time said that most users don’t come to Facebook for news, so it doesn’t make sense to overinvest in that area.
After Meta reversed the deals, many publishers noticed they were bringing in less traffic from Facebook. But in recent months, some have said they have seen an uptick in traffic from the platform.
Meanwhile, AI has also caused massive disruptions in the publishing industry, with some tech firms scraping websites for content to train their large language models.
Publishers have also claimed that traffic to their sites has been crushed by new features, like Google’s AI summary, which populates at the top of search results.
Companies have tried to find ways to block AI crawlers from stealing from their sites without compensation.
Meta announced an AI content-licensing deal with Reuters last October, but it has only started having wider conversations with more publishers in recent months, according to the report.
Many of the firm’s rivals have been quicker to sign deals with media conglomerates.
OpenAI reached licensing agreements with News Corp, Axel Springer and Dotdash Meredith – since renamed People Inc.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has a similar deal with the New York Times.
