BBC Threatens Legal Action Against AI Startup Perplexity Over Content Scraping

BBC Threatens to Sue Perplexity, Alleging 'Verbatim' Reproduction of Its Content

Imad is a senior reporter covering Google and internet culture. Hailing from Texas, Imad started his journalism career in 2013 and has amassed bylines with The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, Tom's Guide and Wired, among others. The BBC is threatening to sue AI search engine Perplexity for unauthorized use of its content, alleging the artificial intelligence company generates BBC's material "verbatim." In a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, as published by The Financial Times on Friday, the BBC alleges that Perplexity's default AI model was "trained using BBC content." The BBC said it would seek an injunction unless Perplexity stopped scraping BBC content, deleted all BBC material and submitted a "a proposal for financial compensation." The BBC declined to comment but said reporting by the FT was accurate. In a statement to the FT, Perplexity said the BBC's claims are "manipulative and opportunistic" and that the broadcasting giant fundamentally doesn't understand how the technology, internet or IP law work. Perplexity also alleged that the threat of litigation shows "how far the BBC is willing to go to preserve Google's illegal monopoly for its own self-interest." A US judge ruled last year that Google violated antitrust law to bolster its search dominance. Since Perplexity is an online search engine built on top of a large language model, it can answer pretty much any question asked. This means that it needs good quality information to give users satisfying answers. The BBC alleges that since Perplexity generates answers built on BBC content, that lessens the need for readers to go to the BBC directly. There's also concern that AI companies aren't using its journalism correctly and impartially, which could damage its reputation. The BBC alleges that 17% of Perplexity search responses had major issues, and "the most common problems were factual inaccuracies, sourcing and missing context." Perplexity didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. While this is the first time the BBC has gone after an AI company, it isn't the first time Perplexity has run into issues with publishers. Outlets currently suing or threatening to sue Perplexity for copyright infringement include The Wall Street Journal along with the New York Post, Forbes and The New York Times. An investigation by Wired last year alleged that Perplexity found ways to get around blocks and scrape its content. In the midst of these complaints, Perplexity launched a revenue sharing program with publishers last year, which includes Fortune, Time, The Texas Tribute and Der Spiegel. Publishers are becoming highly defensive of their content, with AI companies seeing valuations sore on the backdrop of increasingly narrow margins in media. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, currently has a valuation of $300 billion and Perplexity's valuation has also soared to $14 billion. Perplexity investors include SoftBank, Nvidia and Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. This is while journalism has struggled in the online age, with ad dollars being siphoned by Google and attention shifting towards social media apps. Since 2005, 2,900 local newspapers have closed in the US, according to a study from Northwestern University. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

BBC threatens legal action against AI start-up Perplexity over content scraping

Daniel Thomas in Cannes and Cristina Criddle in San Francisco The BBC is threatening legal action against artificial intelligence search engine Perplexity, in its first effort to clamp down on tech groups scraping its vast troves of content to develop the cutting-edge technology. In a letter to Perplexity chief Aravind Srinivas seen by the Financial Times, the British national broadcaster says it has evidence that the US start-up's "default AI model" was "trained using BBC content". The letter states it could seek an injunction unless the San Francisco-based company ceases scraping all BBC content, deletes any copies of the broadcaster's material held for the purposes of developing its AI systems, and provides "a proposal for financial compensation" for the alleged infringement of its intellectual property so far. The move is the first time that the British broadcaster has sought to tackle AI companies over this matter, and reflects growing concerns that its content -- much of which is freely and easily available as a public sector broadcaster -- is being widely ripped off. Perplexity said the BBC's claims were "manipulative and opportunistic" and that it had "a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law. "[The claims] also show how far the BBC is willing to go to preserve Google's illegal monopoly for its own self-interest," the company added. Perplexity does not build or train foundation models, but provides an interface that allows users to choose between others made by groups including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Its in-house model is created from Meta's Llama and refined to improve accuracy and reduce hallucinations, where models generate false information, a person close to the company said. The BBC is publicly funded in the UK, which means that striking potential licensing deals with AI groups could be a valuable source of income at a time when it is under pressure to cut costs while it negotiates its overall funding in a 10-year charter renewal process. The broadcaster has held talks with Big Tech groups, including Amazon, about allowing its content to be used to train AI models, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Perplexity, which counts Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos among its investors, is currently finalising a funding round that would value the start-up at $14bn -- a $5bn jump from the valuation it secured six months ago. Perplexity has more than 30mn users, mostly based in the US. Its primary source of revenue is from subscriptions. The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity, and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results including content that has only recently been made available online. "Perplexity's tool directly competes with the BBC's own services, circumventing the need for users to access those services," it said. The broadcaster's executives are particularly concerned that AI companies are misusing its content, which they claim could damage its reputation for neutral and impartial journalism. According to its own research into the accuracy of several AI assistants in December last year, 17 per cent of Perplexity search responses "had significant issues with how they represented the BBC content used as a source . . . the most common problems were factual inaccuracies, sourcing and missing context". The letter said: "It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences -- including UK licence fee-payers who fund the BBC -- and undermining their trust in the BBC." In October last year, the BBC began registering copyright in its news website with the US Copyright Office on a rolling basis, it said, and so is entitled to "statutory damages in relation to the unauthorised use of these copyright works". Perplexity is already engaged in a legal battle with News Corp's subsidiaries Dow Jones, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. It has also previously received cease and desist letters from other outlets including the New York Times and Condé Nast. However, it has introduced revenue-sharing agreements with publishers including Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel, which will compensate news organisations that are signed up when their publication is referenced in an answer by the chatbot.

BBC threatens AI firm with legal action over unauthorised content use

"It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences - including UK licence fee payers who fund the BBC - and undermining their trust in the BBC," it added. Chatbots and image generators that can generate content response to simple text or voice prompts in seconds have swelled in popularity since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. But their rapid growth and improving capabilities has prompted questions about their use of existing material without permission. Much of the material used to develop generative AI models has been pulled from a massive range of web sources using bots and crawlers, which automatically extract site data. The rise in this activity, known as web scraping, recently prompted British media publishers to join calls by creatives for the UK government to uphold protections around copyrighted content. Many organisations, including the BBC, use a file called "robots.txt" in their website code to try to block bots and automated tools from extracting data en masse for AI. It instructs bots and web crawlers to not access certain pages and material, where present. But compliance with the directive remains voluntary and, according to some reports, bots do not always respect it. The BBC said in its letter that while it disallowed two of Perplexity's crawlers, the company "is clearly not respecting robots.txt". Mr Srinivas denied accusations that its crawlers ignored robots.txt instructions in an interview with Fast Company last June. Perplexity also says that because it does not build foundation models, it does not use website content for AI model pre-training.

BBC threatens legal action against AI startup over content scraping

Letter sent to Perplexity AI but US-based firm calls corporation's claims 'manipulative and opportunistic' The BBC is threatening legal action against Perplexity AI, in the corporation's first move to protect its content from being scraped without permission to build artificial intelligence technology. The corporation has sent a letter to Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup, saying it has gathered evidence that Perplexity's model was "trained using BBC content". The letter, first seen by the Financial Times, threatens an injunction against Perplexity unless it stops scraping all BBC content to train its AI models, and deletes any copies of the broadcaster's material it holds unless it provides "a proposal for financial compensation". The legal threat comes weeks after Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, and the boss of Sky both criticised proposals being considered by the government that could let tech companies use copyright-protected work without permission. "If we currently drift in the way we are doing now we will be in crisis," Davie said, speaking at the Enders conference. "We need to make quick decisions now around areas like ... protection of IP. We need to protect our national intellectual property, that is where the value is. What do I need? IP protection; come on, let's get on with it." The industry would like an opt-in regime, forcing AI companies to seek permission and strike licensing deals with copyright holders before they can use the content to train their models. In October, Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, accusing it of engaging in a "massive amount of illegal copying" in a "brazen scheme ... free-riding on the valuable content the publishers produce". Perplexity told the FT that the BBC's claims were "manipulative and opportunistic" and that it had a "fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law". Perplexity does not build or train foundation models - unlike other companies such as OpenAI, Google and Meta - but provides an interface that allows users to choose between them. The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity. "Perplexity's tool directly competes with the BBC's own services, circumventing the need for users to access those services," the corporation said. In October the BBC began registering copyright in its news website in the US, so it is entitled to "statutory damages in relation to unauthorised use of these copyright works". In the UK, original proposals published in a consultation indicated that the government could let AI companies scrape content unless media owners opt out, which the industry said would "scrape the value" out of the £125bn creative industry. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has since said that the government has no preferred option regarding AI copyright laws in the UK but promised the creative sector that it would not be harmed by legislation. "We are a Labour government, and the principle [that] people must be paid for their work is foundational," she told a media conference earlier this month. "You have our word that if it doesn't work for the creative industries, it will not work for us." Publishers including the Financial Times, Axel Springer, Hearst and News Corporation have signed content licensing deals with OpenAI. Reuters has struck a deal with Meta, and the parent of the Daily Mail has an agreement with ProRata.ai. The Guardian has approached Perplexity for comment.

BBC threatens to sue US tech start-up for ripping off news stories

The BBC is threatening to sue a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) company accusing it of ripping off the broadcaster's news stories. The corporation has reportedly written to Perplexity AI, a search engine rival to Google, saying it has seen evidence that the company's AI model was trained using BBC articles. The letter, which was sent to Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity's chief, threatened an injunction against the American company unless it stops scraping BBC stories, deletes all existing copies of the broadcaster's content and submits a "proposal for financial compensation". Perplexity has been contacted for comment. The company told the Financial Times, which first reported the letter, that the BBC's claims were "manipulative and opportunistic", adding that the broadcaster had "a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law". It said: "[The claims] also show how far the BBC is willing to go to preserve Google's monopoly for its own self-interest." The legal salvo marks are the first time the BBC has entered the escalating debate over AI and copyright. High-profile companies and bosses across the creative industries have accused tech firms of disregarding copyright laws by using their material to train AI models without permission. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, which are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, have both already sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. Meanwhile, The New York Times has launched legal action against ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Hollywood giant Disney and record labels Universal and Sony are among other major media companies to have launched legal action. AI licencing deals The BBC, which is primarily funded through the licence fee, has reportedly held discussions with tech firms including Amazon about licencing its content to be used for AI. But the legal action suggests growing concerns at the corporation that its articles have already been ripped off. It comes at a critical time for the BBC, which is locked in discussions with ministers over the future of the licence fee funding model. Any AI licencing deals could prove a vital new source of revenue at a time when the broadcaster has been forced to make heavy cuts to balance the books. Perplexity, which was founded in 2022, is an AI-powered search engine that allows users to search the web by asking questions in a conversational style. It runs a default language model and also provides subscribers with access to others including Chat GPT and Claude. The company, which counts Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among its investors, has more than 30m users and is closing in on fresh funding that would give it a valuation of $14bn (£10.4bn). In the letter, the BBC reportedly accused Perplexity of reproducing parts of its news stories verbatim, arguing that the company was diverting readers away from its website. The BBC also raised concerns that AI search engines were inserting factual inaccuracies or removing context from articles, which it warned could damage the broadcaster's reputation for impartial journalism. It said: "It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences - including UK licence fee-payers who fund the BBC - and undermining their trust in the BBC."

BBC threatens Perplexity with lawsuit over AI content scraping

Perplexity hits back, claiming that the BBC lacks a fundamental understanding of tech and IP law. The BBC is threatening to take legal action against Perplexity, accusing the start-up of scraping its content to train AI models. The Financial Times, which broke the news, reported that the UK broadcaster sent a scathing letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, demanding that the start-up stop scraping all BBC content to train its AI models and delete copies of the broadcaster's material it has - unless it can provide a "proposal for financial compensation". However, Perplexity, in a statement to the financial publication, called the BBC's claims "manipulative and opportunistic", adding that the broadcaster had a "fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law." Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine backed by investors including Nvidia, Accel and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Three years since splashing on to the scene, the start-up has already raised more than $1bn - most recently raising $500m in a venture round last month. According to its website, the start-up gathers information from "authoritative sources" such as articles, websites and journals. It then distils that information, delivering its users answers to their queries in a conversational tone. The BBC claims that parts of its content were reproduced verbatim by Perplexity. Last year, the New York Times sent Perplexity a 'cease and desist' notice, demanding that the start-up stop using its content for generative AI. Similar allegations of content scraping were made by tech magazine Wired and Forbes. A lawsuit brought against the start-up by Dow Jones, the publisher of Wall Street Journal and the New York Post accused Perplexity of "hallucinating" fake sections of new stories and falsely crediting them to legitimate publications. The start-up launched a revenue sharing program with news publishers last year, after it began receiving backlash over its content scouring practices. As of last December, the partner program includes big names such as Fortune, Time, the LA Times, World History Encyclopaedia and several non-English publishers. Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters told SiliconRepublic.com that not only is it possible to create AI systems that respect copyright, but that respecting copyright will further those systems and improve accessibility to information. However, it seems that AI start-ups and news publishers are increasingly at odds with each other. More than a dozen top news publishers, including Forbes, Condé Nast, Vox, The Guardian and Politico filed a joint lawsuit against the Canadian AI firm Cohere this year over allegations of "systematic copyright and trademark infringement". While The New York Times launched a similar legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023 which is still ongoing. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

BBC Threatens Legal Action Against Perplexity Over Content Scraping: Report

Perplexity said BBC had a fundamental misunderstanding of technology UK broadcaster BBC is threatening legal action against AI search engine Perplexity accusing the startup of training its "default AI model" using BBC content, the Financial Times reported on Friday. In a letter to Perplexity Chief Executive Aravind Srinivas seen by the FT, BBC said it may seek an injunction unless the AI firm stops scraping its content, deletes existing copies used to train its AI systems, and submits "a proposal for financial compensation" for the alleged misuse of its intellectual property. Perplexity called BBC's claims "manipulative and opportunistic" in a statement to the FT, adding that BBC had "a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law." Perplexity and BBC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Since ChatGPT's introduction publishers have raised alarms about chatbots that comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for users. Perplexity has faced accusations from media organisations including Forbes and Wired for plagiarising their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address publisher concerns. In October, the New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. © Thomson Reuters 2025

Perplexity Rejects BBC's Legal Claims Over AI-Driven News Content Reuse | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. According to the Financial Times and other published reports, in a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, the BBC alleges that Perplexity's "default AI model" was trained using BBC material and demands the startup cease all scraping of its content, delete any copies used for AI development, and propose financial compensation for the alleged infringement. This is the first time the BBC has sought legal recourse over content scraping by AI companies, according to the FT, reflecting mounting concerns that its freely available public sector content is being widely repurposed without authorization. The broadcaster claims that parts of its content have been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity, with links to BBC articles surfacing in search results, including material that was only recently published online. BBC executives argue that such practices undermine the BBC's reputation for impartial journalism and erode public trust, citing internal research that found 17% of Perplexity responses using BBC sources contained significant inaccuracies or missing context. Perplexity is backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and is reportedly finalizing a funding round at a $14 billion valuation. The FT reported that it dismissed the BBC's claims as "manipulative and opportunistic," asserting that the broadcaster fundamentally misunderstands technology, the internet and intellectual property law. The company maintains that it does not build or train foundational models but rather provides an interface for users to access models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, with its own system based on Meta's Llama and refined for accuracy. Perplexity has previously faced legal challenges from News Corp subsidiaries and received cease and desist letters from other major publishers, but has also signed revenue-sharing agreements with outlets such as Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel. "It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences -- including U.K. license fee-payers who fund the BBC -- and undermining their trust in the BBC," the broadcaster wrote in its letter to Perplexity, according to the Financial Times. Recent coverage by PYMNTS has highlighted growing friction between generative AI companies and publishers over content scraping, with Perplexity frequently at the center of such disputes. PYMNTS has reported on similar legal threats from the New York Times and Dow Jones, as well as the launch of Perplexity's publisher revenue-sharing program in response to mounting industry backlash.