Thomson said on an earnings call that traditionally,“the more you customise,the harder and more expensive it is to scale”,but AI could change that. “As the well-known management consultant Socrates said,the secret of change is not to focus on fighting the old,but on building the new.”

Thomson said revenue across the company fell 2 per cent to $US2.4 billion,mainly because of foreign exchange movements,and this was a better performance than many media businesses when advertising markets were “clearly insipid” in parts of the world. He said a company-wide cost-cutting program was starting to gain traction.

“That cost reduction drive includes taking the difficult but necessary step of reducing head count by an expected 5 per cent,and we now anticipate that program will yield at least $US160 million in annualised savings by the end of this calendar year,” he said.