The New York Times Files Copyright Infringement Suit Against AI Startup Perplexity

The New York Times has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI search startup Perplexity, marking its second such legal action against an artificial intelligence company. The suit, filed Friday, follows a similar action taken this week by the Chicago Tribune against Perplexity, joining several media outlets alleging unauthorized use of their content. The lawsuit asserts that "Perplexity provides commercial products to its own users that substitute" for The Times' content, "without permission or remuneration." This legal action aligns with a broader strategy by publishers, who, while recognizing the growth of AI, utilize lawsuits as leverage to encourage formal content licensing agreements and compensation for original journalism. Perplexity has previously launched initiatives aimed at addressing content creators' compensation concerns. This includes a Publishers' Program, which offers participating outlets a share of ad revenue, and Comet Plus, which allocates 80% of its monthly subscription fee to publishers. The AI firm also recently finalized a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images. Graham James, a spokesperson for The Times, stated, "While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products." The lawsuit specifically targets Perplexity’s retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) products, which reportedly gather information from websites and databases to produce responses that are often "verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgments" of copyrighted works, including content behind paywalls. The Times also alleges that Perplexity's search engine has "hallucinated information and falsely attributed it to the outlet," potentially damaging its brand. Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s head of communications, commented to TechCrunch that publishers have historically sued new tech companies, stating, "Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph." This legal challenge adds to mounting pressure on Perplexity, which has faced similar claims from News Corp, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, Nikkei, Asahi Shimbun, and Reddit. Additionally, outlets like Wired and Forbes have accused Perplexity of plagiarism and scraping websites despite explicit blocking requests, a claim reportedly confirmed by Cloudflare. The Times seeks financial compensation for alleged damages and a court order to prohibit Perplexity from continued use of its content. Despite the legal conflicts, The Times and other publishers have also entered into licensing agreements with AI firms. Earlier this year, The New York Times struck a multi-year deal with Amazon to license its content for AI model training. OpenAI has similarly signed content licensing agreements with organizations including the Associated Press, Axel Springer, Vox Media, and The Atlantic.