- The head of DMGT, Lord Rothermere, accuses technology companies of “cheating” press articles
Artificial intelligence could destroy independent news publishers in the UK and pose an “existential threat to democracy”, the executive chairman of the owner of The Daily Mail has warned.
Lord Rothermere has accused technology companies of “ripping off” news articles written by journalists from his DMGT media group in order to train their artificial intelligence models.
Tech companies then repurposed the content that was downloaded without permission in order to make a profit, he added.
Most importantly, they did so without considering the consequences and responsibility for the “effectiveness” of the content, he warned.
Lord Rothermere (pictured), executive chairman of the owner of The Daily Mail, has accused technology companies of “ripping off” news articles written by journalists from his media group DMGT in order to train their artificial intelligence models
Artificial intelligence could destroy independent news publishers in the UK and could pose an ‘existential threat to democracy’, Lord Rothermere has warned
In an interview with The Times, Lord Rothermere said: “It’s all very well to talk about the UK being a leader in artificial intelligence and I think that’s fantastic, but the technology has huge implications. And it’s not just about the danger of tearing [the newspaper] industry, but also disrupting other industries, all creative industries.
“How many jobs will be lost? What damage will the economy suffer if these predatory organizations are allowed to continue operating without any legal consequences?
– All this requires high level of intelligence. The danger is that these huge platforms will engage in an arms race with each other.
“They are like fighting elephants and everyone else is like a mouse that gets trampled and they don’t even realize the consequences of their actions.”
Lord Rothermere revealed that the DMGT is considering taking legal action against artificial intelligence companies that he believes have trained their models using so-called “CNN/DailyMail Dataset” – a database containing hundreds of thousands of news articles written by The Daily’s journalists. Post and the American news network CNN.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left) shakes hands with X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk after speaking in London on November 2 following the UK AI Security Summit
Lord Rothermere said DMGT had experimented with using artificial intelligence to help reporters publish their stories more quickly, but found it took them longer to validate a story produced using the technology than to write it themselves.
He also criticized the BBC’s domination of the British media market.
Lord Rothermere said: “The BBC is by far the largest media organization in the UK.
‘It’s free. People love it. They cannot be prevented from doing so.
“But it’s almost as if competition law applies to everyone except the BBC.
“The BBC can go wild wherever it wants and do whatever it wants because it is a perfect organization and somehow we are all compromised.”
