Murdoch briefly went so far as to block Google from including The Times within its search results. His company, News Corporation, complained to the European Commission, accusing Google of exploiting “a dominant market position to stifle competition”.

His hard line has seen results:  Australia, where Murdoch retains a lasting influence, introduced pioneering laws that effectively make Google and Facebook pay for news in 2021. 

After a stand-off, Google backed down, striking deals with dozens of outlets. Now, countries around the world are following, and News Corp and Google have signed a multi-year partnership deal that involves “significant payments” from the tech company.

While AI now poses a fresh threat, there is also an opportunity. 

Mr Thomson told shareholders last month that it would allow the company to reduce costs. He has suggested that this will be in back office functions, although the company’s local Australian titles are already using AI to author stories about weather and fuel prices.

Murdoch’s loudest critics would find it ironic that Thomson is complaining about AI poisoning people’s minds. But most would concede that he has a point. 

While chatbots such as ChatGPT can appear omniscient, at a fundamental level they are simply consuming and repackaging huge quantities of existing knowledge that they have already ingested. Creating that knowledge is another matter altogether.

Major news sites such as the New York Times, Reuters and CNN have already begun blocking ChatGPT software that scours the web for material to ingest. 

That may only be an initial step. The New York Times is reportedly considering legal action against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT as negotiations between the companies over a licensing deal fail to bear fruit.

In July, The Telegraph revealed that DMGT, the owner of the Daily Mail, was considering potential action against Google for using its online articles to train its ChatGPT competitor, Bard.

News Corp, despite Murdoch’s previous fiery past rhetoric against Google, has been less confrontational.

“What you will see over time, [is] a lot of litigation,” Thomson said. “Some media companies have already begun those discussions. Personally, we’re not interested in that at this stage. We’re much more interested in negotiation, and we have various negotiations going on.” 

News organisations including the Associated Press have already agreed deals with OpenAI.

However, Thomson is likely to strike a hard bargain. His critique is not only that AI companies are scraping huge quantities of copyrighted data, but that it is producing biased content that is corrosive to society.