News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), the owner of the Sun and the Times newspapers, has reported a 75% decline in its annual profit and said it will roll out AI-generated content in a bid to cut costs.
The company's net income for the financial year ended June 30, 2023, dropped to $187 million from $760 million a year earlier as it was hit by a decline in advertising income, which was felt most acutely in the UK and Australia.
Digital revenues were over 50% of total turnover for the first time, representing an "inflexion point", News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) said. Its efforts to 'paywall' quality titles appear to be working with subscriptions to the Times and Sunday Times growing to 565,000 compared with 508,000 in 2022.
Chief executive Robert Thomson confirmed the company is looking to capitalise on the step change in technology ushered in by large language models such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, which are adept at content generation.
"That momentum is surely gathering pace in the age of generative AI, which we believe presents a remarkable opportunity to create a new stream of revenues while allowing us to reduce costs across the business," he said.
"We are already in active negotiations to establish a value for our unique content sets and IP that will play a crucial role in the future of AI."