Perplexity Strikes Multi-Year Getty Images Deal to Address Copyright Concerns

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

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AI search startup Perplexity has signed a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images, allowing it to display stock photos with proper attribution. The deal represents a strategic shift for the company amid ongoing copyright infringement lawsuits.

Perplexity Secures Getty Images Partnership Amid Copyright Battles

AI search startup Perplexity has announced a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images, marking a significant strategic shift for the company as it faces mounting legal challenges over content usage. The deal allows Perplexity to display images from Getty's extensive library across its AI-powered search and discovery tools, with proper attribution and source links

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Source: PetaPixel

Source: PetaPixel

The partnership represents more than just a licensing arrangement—it signals Perplexity's effort to legitimize its content practices after facing allegations of scraping and plagiarism from multiple news organizations. Getty Images stock surged 25% following the announcement, reflecting investor confidence in the deal's potential

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Background of Content Controversies

Perplexity has been embroiled in several high-profile copyright disputes over the past year. The company faced criticism for pulling content from Wall Street Journal articles, including Getty photos, without proper licensing

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Source: Market Screener

Source: Market Screener

More recently, Reddit filed a lawsuit in October alleging "industrial-scale, unlawful" scraping of user content, while two Japanese media groups, Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun, sued the company for allegedly copying and storing article content illicitly

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These legal challenges have put Perplexity in the spotlight as part of broader industry debates about AI companies' use of copyrighted material for training and content generation.

Terms and Implementation Details

While financial terms remain undisclosed, sources indicate this is not a traditional lump sum licensing deal, partly because Perplexity doesn't train its own foundational models

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. The agreement builds on an existing relationship—Getty had been part of Perplexity's Publishers' Program for over a year, sharing ad revenue when their content appeared in search results.

Source: Benzinga

Source: Benzinga

Under the new arrangement, Perplexity will integrate Getty's creative and editorial imagery through the company's API technology. Crucially, the startup has committed to improving how it displays images, including enhanced credit systems with links back to original sources

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Industry Implications for AI and Copyright

The deal reflects broader tensions in the AI industry over content usage and attribution. Getty Images itself has been actively defending its intellectual property, previously suing Stability AI in 2023 for allegedly training its Stable Diffusion model on over 12 million Getty images without permission

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"Attribution and accuracy are fundamental to how people should understand the world in an age of AI," said Jessica Chan, Perplexity's head of content and publisher partnerships

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. The partnership aims to address growing concerns about AI-generated content that fails to credit original creators.

Nick Unsworth, Getty's vice president of strategic development, emphasized that such partnerships "support AI platforms to increase the quality and accuracy of information delivered to consumers"

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Strategic Defense Against Legal Challenges

Perplexity's emphasis on attribution forms part of its broader legal strategy, as the company argues its use of publisher content constitutes "fair use" because publicly available facts aren't copyrightable

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. However, this defense has been tested by ongoing lawsuits from various content creators and publishers.

The Getty partnership could serve as a template for similar agreements with other content providers, potentially helping Perplexity establish a more sustainable approach to content licensing as the AI industry faces increasing regulatory scrutiny over intellectual property rights.

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