CNN sues Perplexity AI over 17,000 stolen stories as copyright battle intensifies

Perplexity AI Says 'You Can't Copyright Facts' in Defense Against CNN Copyright Suit

More than 100 copyright lawsuits have been filed against AI companies as of early 2026. The television network CNN is taking aim at the artificial intelligence search engine Perplexity in a lawsuit over copyright infringement. As reported by the network's Brian Stetler, the suit, filed Thursday in a New York District Court, accuses the AI company of copying and distributing CNN's content, including over 17,000 of CNN's stories, videos, images and other published works. Though this is CNN's first legal case against an AI company, the network joins other publishers who have sued the San Francisco-based startup, including the New York Times and News Corp. According to the suit, CNN attempted to strike a licensing deal with Perplexity, but those talks didn't result in an agreement. CNN previously made a content licensing deal with Meta last year, where the tech giant compensates the media company for using its reporting and content to respond to queries on Meta AI. AI products regularly scrape news publications and websites to answer user questions with real-time data, accelerating the collapse in traffic and revenue to original sources. In response to the lawsuit, Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's chief communications officer, told Stetler and other media outlets in a statement: "You can't copyright facts." The US government's Copyright Office states: "Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed." CNN said in its own statement that a company valued at tens of billions of dollars shouldn't "steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits" and that "commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it." A Perplexity representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. AI copyright suits Perplexity is one of several companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, that have been battling news publishers and media giants over copyright claims. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) More than 100 such lawsuits have been filed. But different conclusions have been reached as to whether training AI models on copyrighted data counts as fair use, said Michael Goodyear, an associate professor at New York Law School. Considerations include how the training occurs, what AI outputs contain and whether there's any competitive harm to copyright holders. "No appellate courts have yet weighed in on the viability of these copyright infringement claims against AI companies," Goodyear said. In the CNN case, he said that Perplexity is correct that facts aren't protected by copyright, but the way CNN presents facts could be. "Even short news articles would typically qualify for copyright protection under the low bar of required originality," Goodyear said. "The question becomes whether the thousands of cases of infringement CNN describes are copying whole paragraphs verbatim, or whether they are paraphrasing or merely copying unprotectable facts." AI licensing deals As plunging website traffic has drained billions in publisher revenue and triggered widespread media layoffs, AI firms are aggravating the crisis. According to a new report from the think tank Open Markets Institute, over the past six months, the rate of AI crawlers bypassing paywalls and blocks has nearly quadrupled, spiking from 3.3% to 12.9%. That's partly why a number of publishers signed AI content licensing deals with tech companies to monetize content used to train AI systems. One way out for Perplexity may be to renegotiate a licensing deal with CNN. Even if Perplexity has valid legal arguments, a licensing agreement could shift from unauthorized scraping toward a formalized content partnership. However, the Open Markets Institute report says that when it comes to AI content licensing, news and content creators are trapped in a double bind. The same tech giants whose AI tools are starving websites of human traffic are now the ones gatekeeping the licensing deals meant to replace that lost ad revenue.

CNN sues Perplexity over 'verbatim' copycat articles

CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, claiming that the startup's AI tools generate "verbatim" copies of its work, as reported earlier by CNN. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court on Thursday, also alleges that Perplexity provides users with information locked behind CNN's subscription. Perplexity, which offers an AI "answer" engine along with the AI browser Comet, is accused of ignoring CNN's efforts "to recognize or block Perplexity's unidentified crawlers" from scraping its content. "Human beings report, research, write, edit, and create the content that Perplexity takes without permission or compensation," the lawsuit claims. In one instance, CNN accuses Perplexity's AI search tool of producing "substantial" verbatim portions of its article, "What's next for Minneapolis? A shaky promise, mounting tensions and the fight for control," by simply prompting the tool with its title. CNN joins a long list of companies that are suing Perplexity for copyright infringement, including The New York Times, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, and The Wall Street Journal's parent company, News Corp. Perplexity is also facing lawsuits from Amazon and Reddit. As alleged in the lawsuit, CNN says its deal to offer its content through Perplexity's Comet Plus subscription in October 2025 "did not lead to a final agreement between the parties due to the inability to agree on multiple issues, including limits on Perplexity's use of CNN content in its answers to users." CNN scrapped the agreement in November and later wrote a letter to Perplexity, demanding that it stop using its content and trademarks without permission. Perplexity allegedly didn't respond. CNN is seeking damages and a permanent block on Perplexity's allegedly unlawful conduct. When reached for comment, Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said, "You can't copyright facts."

CNN sues Perplexity alleging 'massive' copyright infringement

CNN sues Perplexity alleging 'massive' copyright infringement CNN today opened a lawsuit against the AI firm Perplexity AI Inc., alleging the company has violated copyright protections by using artificial intelligence to re-write its reporting, thereby undermining the foundation of its economic model. CNN now joins a long line of publishers that have sued AI firms for copyright infringement. It's also not the first Perplexity has found itself being sued. The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the company in 2024, with the newspaper also launching similar lawsuits against Microsoft Corp. and Open AI Group PBC. "CNN's lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits," said a CNN spokesperson. "The public rely on high quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it." Perplexity's chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer countered by saying, "You can't copyright facts." According to the filing lodged with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, CNN may at first have attempted to strike a content licensing deal with Perplexity, just as several publishers have done over the last few years with various AI companies. Last year, CNN made such an agreement with Meta Platforms Inc. The lawsuit states that there were previously "negotiations" between the parties, which CNN now claims in evidence that "Perplexity knew that it was not permitted to access CNN's content or to use its trademarks or service marks." The lawsuit shows the companies had come to an arrangement in 2025 in which Perplexity would compensate CNN for the use of its content, but it seems the deal fell through and later in the year CNN demanded Perplexity stop using its content and name. The lawsuit alleges Perplexity didn't respond to the warning and continued to use the content. "Perplexity's use infringes CNN's exclusive rights in its federally registered trademarks, and has caused and is likely to cause confusion, mistake, or deception as to whether the articles Perplexity provides are associated or affiliated with, or are sponsored, endorsed, or approved by CNN," the complaint reads. "Perplexity's use is intended to reap the benefit of consumers' trust in CNN."

Perplexity AI sued by CNN for allegedly copying over 17,000 pieces of content without permission

CNN has sued Perplexity, accusing the AI company of unlawfully using the news network's copyrighted content without permission. The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, claims that Perplexity copied over 17,000 of CNN's stories, videos, images and more to support its products and tools. "[Perplexity], a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits," said a CNN spokesperson in a statement. "The public rely on high quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it." What does the lawsuit say? Filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit is CNN's first legal case against an AI company.

CNN Just Sued Perplexity. Every Business Leader Should Be Paying Attention

CNN filed a lawsuit late last week against Perplexity AI, accusing the company of scraping more than 17,000 CNN stories, videos, and images to train its AI products and deliver competing content to users -- without paying for any of it. Perplexity's response: "You can't copyright facts." OK, that's technically true. But there's a deeper business story at play here. The CNN lawsuit is the latest in a wave of legal actions by major publishers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, and Reddit. They're all trying to address the same question that every business leader should be asking: when AI can consume your organization's knowledge and content, and what can it do with it? AI companies are building billion-dollar businesses by training on content other people created. That's the current business model. And those same AI companies will likely impact every industry in one way or another. The leaders who understand what they actually own, how to manage it, and how to monetize it will be best suited to survive, and thrive, during the transition. As a leader, do you know what knowledge your company has that's being extracted freely? Or whether you've built the kind of proprietary advantage that can't be scraped? Most companies have never thought seriously about the value of their knowledge. There's a difference between information that's publicly available and insights that are genuinely proprietary. That difference is becoming one of the most important strategic distinctions in business. Perplexity built its search product partly by pulling from thousands of news sources and delivering the answers directly to users, without sending traffic back to the original publishers. That's the crux of CNN's complaint. Their content was used to create a competing product that replaces the original source entirely.

CNN Files Suit Against Perplexity Alleging Unlawful Content Distribution

May 28 (Reuters) - CNN on Thursday filed a ⁠lawsuit ⁠against Perplexity, alleging the ⁠AI search engine provider is unlawfully distributing its copyrighted content, marking the latest legal tussle between the AI firm and a news publisher. "CNN's lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of ⁠dollars, should ⁠not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits," the Warner Bros.-owned news company said in a statement. The CNN suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought against Perplexity, which uses AI to scour websites and answer users' queries, alleging ⁠the ⁠company has infringed on copyrighted ⁠content and unlawfully scraped data to train its technology. Perplexity is facing lawsuits from the New York Times, ⁠Reddit and Dow Jones, among others. "The public rely on high-quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use ⁠of it," the CNN statement said. "We prefer that they do so through ⁠sensible licensing arrangements, but if they refuse to do that as Perplexity has so far refused to do, they will have to pay through legal damages. There is no free option." Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and writers have been concerned about their content being repurposed to appear in the results of a chatbot query, sparking battles over copyright, compensation and ⁠ownership. Several news firms have now signed licensing deals and partnerships with Big Tech and generative AI companies to ensure that their models have access to verified sources of news, while also compensating publishers and linking back to original articles. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)

CNN Lawsuit Accuses Perplexity of Illegally Copying Content | PYMNTS.com

In its own report Thursday (May 28) on the lawsuit, CNN noted that the litigation is the latest in a string of legal cases brought by publishers against artificial intelligence (AI) startups. However, the report added, it is CNN's first AI copyright action and is believed to be the first such lawsuit by any TV network. "CNN's lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits," a CNN spokesperson said in a statement shared by the network. Perplexity's communications chief issued his own statement: "You can't copyright facts." The lawsuit said that CNN had tried last year to reach a content deal with Perplexity but the companies did not agree on terms. These negotiations, the suit added, would have made Perplexity aware that it did not have permission to access CNN content. CNN's suit follows one filed earlier this month by a group of five publishing houses against Meta, accusing the tech giant of misusing their works to train its Llama AI model. "Meta chose to live by its motto of 'move fast, and break things,' and now must be held accountable for what it broke, including the copyright laws," the publishers, who were joined by author Scott Turow, said in a news release. Meta has said it would fight the publishers' claims, arguing that courts had ruled that training AI on copyrighted material can be considered "fair use." Another lawsuit, filed by a group of media companies in February, accused the AI company Cohere of improperly using at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its large language model. Cohere has called the suit frivolous and said it prioritizes measures to prevent infringement. Meanwhile, tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft are exploring deals with media companies to compensate those publishers when their materials are used for AI training. "Publishers increasingly favor usage-based compensation models that scale with how often AI systems rely on their content, rather than flat licensing fees," PYMNTS reported in February. "Industry executives say such models could offer a more sustainable revenue stream as artificial intelligence usage grows, but many also worry that AI companies may not participate in sufficient numbers to make marketplaces economically meaningful."

CNN files suit against Perplexity alleging unlawful content distribution

May 28 (Reuters) - CNN on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, alleging the AI search engine provider is unlawfully distributing its copyrighted content, marking the latest legal tussle between the AI firm and a news publisher. "CNN's lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits," the Warner Bros.-owned news company said in a statement. The CNN suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought against Perplexity, which uses AI to scour websites and answer users' queries, alleging the company has infringed on copyrighted content and unlawfully scraped data to train its technology. Perplexity is facing lawsuits from the New York Times, Reddit and Dow Jones, among others. "The public rely on high-quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it," the CNN statement said. "We prefer that they do so through sensible licensing arrangements, but if they refuse to do that as Perplexity has so far refused to do, they will have to pay through legal damages. There is no free option." Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and writers have been concerned about their content being repurposed to appear in the results of a chatbot query, sparking battles over copyright, compensation and ownership. Several news firms have now signed licensing deals and partnerships with Big Tech and generative AI companies to ensure that their models have access to verified sources of news, while also compensating publishers and linking back to original articles. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)