New York Times Sues Perplexity Over Copyright
▼ Summary
– The New York Times has sued AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, alleging it uses Times content without permission to create competing products.
– The lawsuit is part of a broader strategy by publishers to use legal action as leverage to force AI companies into licensing deals that compensate content creators.
– Perplexity is accused of using its RAG technology to crawl websites, including behind paywalls, and repackage copyrighted content in its responses to users.
– The Times also claims Perplexity’s search engine has generated false information and attributed it to the outlet, damaging its brand.
– This lawsuit adds to mounting legal pressure on Perplexity from other publishers, even as some outlets, including the Times, have separately struck licensing deals with other AI firms.
The New York Times has initiated a significant copyright infringement lawsuit against the AI search company Perplexity, marking its second major legal action targeting an artificial intelligence firm. This move aligns the Times with other prominent media organizations, including the Chicago Tribune, which filed a similar complaint this week. The core allegation centers on Perplexity’s commercial products allegedly substituting for the newspaper’s own offerings without providing permission or financial compensation to the original publisher.
Filed amidst ongoing negotiations between several publishers and AI companies, this lawsuit represents a strategic effort within a broader, years-long industry campaign. Publishers recognize the unstoppable advancement of AI technology and are employing legal pressure as leverage. The goal is to compel AI firms to establish formal licensing agreements that properly compensate content creators and help sustain the economic foundation of professional journalism.
In response to industry demands for payment, Perplexity previously launched a Publishers’ Program, offering partners like Gannett, TIME, and the Los Angeles Times a portion of advertising revenue. The company also introduced Comet Plus, directing most of its subscription fee to participating publishers, and secured a licensing agreement with Getty Images. Despite these efforts, a Times spokesperson stated the company “firmly objects to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products,” vowing to hold accountable those who disregard the value of their journalistic work.
The legal complaint focuses on Perplexity’s use of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology. This method involves gathering information from various websites and databases, including those behind paywalls, to generate answers for users through chatbots and browser assistants. The lawsuit contends that Perplexity often repackages this sourced material into responses that are verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgments of the original copyrighted content. The Times further argues that this process effectively steals content meant exclusively for paying subscribers and delivers it in real-time to Perplexity’s customers.
Additionally, the Times claims that Perplexity’s search engine has occasionally generated incorrect information, falsely attributing these “hallucinations” to the newspaper, thereby damaging its brand reputation. A Perplexity communications executive responded by noting that publishers have historically sued emerging technologies, from radio to social media, suggesting such legal challenges have ultimately failed to halt progress.
This lawsuit follows a cease-and-desist letter sent to Perplexity over a year ago. The Times asserts it made repeated attempts over eighteen months to halt the use of its content absent a negotiated agreement. This action is part of a wider legal offensive by the newspaper, which is also suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using its articles to train AI models without payment. OpenAI has defended its practices as “fair use” of publicly available data, while a related case against Anthropic resulted in a substantial settlement, establishing that using pirated materials for training infringes copyrights.
The legal pressure on Perplexity is intensifying. Other entities, including News Corp, Encyclopedia Britannica, and major Japanese publishers, have raised similar claims. Outlets like Wired and Forbes have accused the company of plagiarism and unethically scraping content from websites that explicitly forbid it, a practice recently corroborated by internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare.
In its filing, the Times seeks monetary damages for alleged harm and a court order to permanently prohibit Perplexity from using its content. Notably, the newspaper is not opposed to collaboration with AI companies in principle, having itself entered a multi-year licensing deal with Amazon for content training. This reflects a growing industry trend where publishers, including The Associated Press and Axel Springer, are forging agreements with AI firms to license their material for training and chatbot integration, provided proper compensation is secured.
(Source: TechCrunch)
