Published on LinkedIn and amitabhapte.com on7thDec 2025
This week in AI – Deals, lawsuits, and the new media survival playbook
This week, traditional media finally showed its hand in the AI era.
Some chose partnership. Others chose confrontation. And together they revealed a simple truth.
Media is no longer negotiating with platforms. It’s negotiating with algorithms.
Meta struck multiple AI licensing deals with publishers, a pragmatic shift from conflict to compensation. Better to pay for data than fight over it.
Meanwhile, The New York Times went the other way, suing Perplexity for allegedly copying millions of articles. This isn’t just a copyright case. It’s a line in the sand.
“If AI becomes the new front page, who gets compensated for the journalism that trains it?”
Hollywood signalled its own adaptation curve. The $72B Warner Bros–Netflix pact is less about creative ambition and more about survival in an AI-enhanced production economy, where scale, tooling, and efficiency win.
Regulators made their presence felt too. Elon Musk’s X was fined €140M by the EU.
Australia signalled tougher accountability measures as social platforms edge closer to bans.
And then came a preview of the next frontier, Tilly Norwood, a fully AI-generated actress, no agent, no schedule, no limitations.
Cinema isn’t just being disrupted. Its economics are.
My takeaway this weekend
This was the week media stopped asking “What is AI doing to us?”
And started showing “How we plan to survive it.”
Some will partner.
Some will litigate.
Some will scale.
Some will reinvent.
But the pattern is unmistakable.
“AI is now the terrain media must learn to operate on. The winners will defend their value, license smartly, and adapt faster than algorithms evolve.”
Beyond AI: my mindshare – the FIFA Football World Cup Draw
Football’s biggest stage returns in 2026, stretching across the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
The World Cup isn’t just a tournament. It’s a global mood shift.
From Boston to Miami, Dallas to New York, iconic cities will host matches that celebrate talent, teamwork, and the world’s most universal language. England and Scotland will add their own chapters to the story, with fixtures that promise drama and emotion.
June to July will bring shared living rooms, late-night broadcasts, unforgettable goals, and a month-long reminder of why sport binds us.
The final at MetLife Stadium won’t just close a tournament. It will close a collective experience.
Amitabh Apte 