Speaking at Morgan Stanley investor day in San Francisco on Monday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson has spoken out against Meta's 'disappointing' decision to shutdown news in Australia.

In conversation with Morgan Stanley's Andrew McLeod, Thomson discussed the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and the election on the news business, expressing concern about the potential risks of General AI (Gen AI) as a form of distribution and emphasising the need for media companies to be conscious of these risks.

"In an era where creators have been less rewarded than behemoth distributors," he said, in reference to Meta and Google. "The danger to media is that Gen AI is another form of distribution and it's on amphetamines."

"As you know, for really the last 17 years or so, we've been leading the global debate on digital compensation. We have a very good relationship with Google which continues in multifaceted ways. There’s some argy bargy with Facebook in Australia at the moment. We'll see, we'll see what that digital denouement is. But I think we're early in that particular conflict, and that is the right way to describe it."

In a time when reaching "swift" agreement about the value of journalism was "imperative", Thomson suggested that Facebook's decision in Australia contradicted its supposed community values.

"When you look at - not to start, and we have a certain amount of self-interest, but it's more about the Australian community - when you look at the damage that’s been done to communities. It’s disappointing when you look at Facebook suggesting for example, that 3% of usage relates to news," he said. "Well, that’s obviously a fiction, a preposterous figure. I mean how much discussion is there around news? You have the core news and then I can tell you 100% of the contemporary factual information on Facebook is news. And so those are the numbers that really, Facebook should be focused on as well as being focused on its responsibility to all Australians."