Perplexity and OpenAI Expand Publisher Partnerships Amid AI Search Competition

OpenAI, Perplexity Bet on Publishers to Stay Relevant

Over the last twenty-four hours, both Perplexity and OpenAI have announced new deals with popular online publishers to license their content into these AI systems. The bigger news of the two comes from the former, and Perplexity announced a whopping fifteen publishers - namely ADWEEK, Blavity, DPReview, Gear Patrol, The Independent, Lee Enterprises, Los Angeles Times, MediaLab, Mexico News Daily, Minkabu Infonoid, NewsPicks, Prisa Media, RTL Germany brands stern and ntv, and World History Encyclopedia. This is in addition to their earlier list of partners when they launched the Perplexity Publishers' Program. The first set of partners includes TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com. The program enables Perplexity to share the revenue generated from advertising to these publishers. "They'll also have access to our APIs and developer support to build unique features using our proprietary search technology. They will receive free Perplexity Enterprise Pro for their entire organisation for a year," read the announcement. The program was launched and is being expanded in lieu of fostering a good relationship with the media industry, which otherwise has been turbulent throughout the year. Earlier this year, News Corp, New York Times, Forbes, and Wired had some sort of accusations to make against the AI search engine startup. That said, Perplexity isn't the only one moving forward along these lines. OpenAI has also announced that they're expanding their publisher partnership program with Future, and their 200-plus brands. Notable properties include PC Gamer, TechRadar, Tom's Guide and The Week. "This partnership enables us to enhance the ChatGPT experience by providing more access to engaging, up-to-date and reliable information from a range of specialist sources," said Brad Lightcap, COO, of OpenAI. Over the last few months, OpenAI has also partnered with notable names like Conde Nest, which include brands like Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, etc. Other publishers include Associated Press, Springer, The Atlantic, Vox Media and more. "With the introduction of our SearchGPT prototype⁠, we're testing new search features that make finding information and reliable content sources faster and more intuitive," read an announcement from OpenAI earlier this year. With the launch of SearchGPT, the war between Perplexity and OpenAI is getting heated. There is a clear divide among publishers, and it will be interestigng to see which among the two the next big publication is going to pick. Moreover, OpenAI is also set to eat up Perplexity's moat. OpenAI is also exploring the possibility of integrating advertisements inside the platform, much against Sam Altman's will.

AI Startup Perplexity Adds the Independent, LA Times to Its Publishers' Program

(Reuters) - AI search startup Perplexity said on Thursday it was adding more than a dozen new media partners, including the Los Angeles Times and The Independent, to its program where it shares a portion of ad revenue with the publishers. In its first set of partners from regions including Japan, Spain and Latin America, Perplexity said companies such as Prisa Media and Newspicks will now be part of the publishers' program, joining existing partners like TIME, Der Spiegel and Fortune. "With these new partners ... (Perplexity can) provide insights that resonate with users from different backgrounds and geographies. Their participation ensures that our responses to user queries remain comprehensive (and) nuanced," Perplexity said in a statement. The firm, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and leading AI chipmaker Nvidia, launched the program in July, which involves sharing ad revenue from interactions when a publisher's content is referenced. The program also gives publishers access to Perplexity's Application Programming Interface, or API, which allows software programs to interact with each other, and also provides data analytics to track trends and content performance. The move comes at a time when Perplexity is in a legal tussle with News Corp-owned publishers, with Dow Jones and New York Post suing the company in October, claiming it engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. New York Times has also sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice, demanding it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Perplexity, one of the firms attempting to disrupt the search engine market dominated by Alphabet's Google, has started testing advertising on its AI-powered search platform. (Reporting by Priyanka.G and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)

Perplexity expands its publisher program | TechCrunch

Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, is expanding its publisher program, with the LA Times, Adweek, Mexico News Daily, and a dozen other news outlets signing up. Publishers will share in revenue generated by ads on Perplexity, and receive metrics to track their content's performance -- as long as they don't withdraw. "We would not be able to serve factual, valuable answers without news organizations continuing to report on different topics," Jessica Chan, head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity, said in a statement. "We're excited to welcome these new publishers to the program." Spanish-language media brand Pris Media, newspaper conglomerate Lee Enterprises, and The Independent are among the dozen publishers joining. Other new members include Blavity, NewsPicks, Minkabu Infonoid, Gear Patrol, MediaLab, DPReview, World History Encyclopedia, and RTL Germany brands NTV and Stern. It's not clear to what extent these publishers made their staff aware of the partnerships before they were revealed publicly. A source at LA Times told TechCrunch that reporters weren't informed of the Perplexity deal, or heard only references to it in passing, and that the editorial department wasn't given an opportunity to voice its opinions to leadership. A source at Adweek said some of its staff were not informed or given a say either. One reporter learned about the deal from a press release. "[Everyone's] perplexed. That's truly the best word for it," the LA Times source said. "I don't think anyone seems to have enough information to be positive or negative about it. Some people hadn't heard of Perplexity, so [there's] really just a lack of information to have any position on it. But I'm sure everyone will have thoughts once we know more." Notably absent from the new cohort is The New York Times, which in October sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter demanding the startup stop accessing its articles without permission. Dow Jones, which runs the Wall Street Journal and other newswire services, and The NY Post haven't joined Perplexity's program, either -- they're suing the company over what they've described as a "content kleptocracy." Perplexity has a complicated relationship with publishers. Its search engine uses AI to synthesize and summarize content, including news, from around the web. But the way in which Perplexity presents these summaries -- and the company's data-gathering tactics -- remain points of contention. This summer, Forbes accused Perplexity of plagiarizing its paywalled content and subsequently threatened the company with legal action. Around the same time, Wired published a piece that found Perplexity's platform was paraphrasing its own stories -- sometimes inaccurately. According to Copyleaks, a company building tech to detect AI-generated text, Perplexity was summarizing at least some paywalled news as recently as late October. In a blog post responding to Dow Jones' lawsuit, Perplexity argued that publishers wished its tech "didn't exist" and that they would prefer "publicly reported facts are owned by corporations." But the post avoided addressing whether Perplexity regurgitates content at a massive scale, as some allege, and then competes with publishers of that content for the same audience. Perplexity asserts that it cites its sources, which it does do. The citations are sometimes erroneous, however. In a move that's unlikely to foster much goodwill with publishers, Perplexity is locking down the details of its program's terms. This summer, the company told The Verge that the deals were "multiyear" with a "double-digit" percentage, and payments would be made for each article that Perplexity served to users. But when TechCrunch asked about the terms this week, a spokesperson said Perplexity "wasn't sharing financial specifics." It could be that Perplexity is wary of making the terms public -- publishers could use them as leverage in negotiations with its competitors. In October, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search, a rival AI-powered search tool, alongside its own publishing partners like The Atlantic, News Corp. and Vox Media. Unlike Perplexity's publisher program, OpenAI's allows publishers to manage how their content appears in search results. Perplexity previously said it was working on content controls, but it gave no update on progress this morning. As Perplexity's program expands, the startup may face greater pressure from investors to recoup the costs. Perplexity is said to be raising $500 million in a deal that would value it at $9 billion. But its annual recurring revenue was just about $50 million as of October, the Wall Street Journal reported. Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas appears to be optimistic. In a post on X on Wednesday, he said Perplexity is now serving around 20 million queries a day, up from 2.5 million a day at the beginning of the year.

AI startup Perplexity adds The Independent, LA Times to its publishers' program

Dec 5 (Reuters) - AI search startup Perplexity said on Thursday it was adding more than a dozen new media partners, including the Los Angeles Times and The Independent, to its program where it shares a portion of ad revenue with the publishers. In its first set of partners from regions including Japan, Spain and Latin America, Perplexity said companies such as Prisa Media and Newspicks will now be part of the publishers' program, joining existing partners like TIME, Der Spiegel and Fortune. "With these new partners ... (Perplexity can) provide insights that resonate with users from different backgrounds and geographies. Their participation ensures that our responses to user queries remain comprehensive (and) nuanced," Perplexity said in a statement. The firm, backed by Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab founder Jeff Bezos and leading AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, launched the program in July, which involves sharing ad revenue from interactions when a publisher's content is referenced. The program also gives publishers access to Perplexity's Application Programming Interface, or API, which allows software programs to interact with each other, and also provides data analytics to track trends and content performance. The move comes at a time when Perplexity is in a legal tussle with News Corp-owned (NWSA.O), opens new tab publishers, with Dow Jones and New York Post suing the company in October, claiming it engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. New York Times (NYT.N), opens new tab has also sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice, demanding it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Perplexity, one of the firms attempting to disrupt the search engine market dominated by Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google, has started testing advertising on its AI-powered search platform. Reporting by Priyanka.G and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Media & TelecomMedia & Telecom