Wall Street Journal and New York Post Sue Perplexity AI for Copyright Infringement

Wall Street Journal sues Perplexity AI for copyright infringement

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post filed a lawsuit in a US court on Monday against AI company Perplexity AI, alleging massive copyright infringement and trademark violations. Perplexity is one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups, whose AI powered search engine is often mentioned as a potential disruptor to Google. The lawsuit in a federal court in New York accuses Perplexity of illegally copying and reproducing copyrighted content from The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to power its AI-driven "answer engine." Perplexity.ai is a question-answering platform known for its minimalist and conversational interface. Unlike ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity's tool provides up-to-date answers that often include links to source materials, allowing users to verify information. And unlike a classic search engine, Perplexity provides ready-made answers on its webpage making it unnecessary for users to click through to the source website. According to the complaint, this constituted a "massive freeriding" on protected content that allowed the company to divert readers and revenue from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. "Unlike the business model of a traditional internet search engine, Perplexity's business model does not drive business toward content creators. To the contrary, it usurps content creators' monetization opportunities for itself," the lawsuit alleged. Perplexity, which is backed by Amazon-billionaire Jeff Bezos and AI juggernaut Nvidia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The complaint also accused Perplexity of damaging the publishers' brands by attributing false information to their publications. The publishers seek injunctive relief and statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringement. The plaintiffs are also requesting the destruction of any database containing their copyrighted works. The move follows similar allegations by The New York Times, which has sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, which is a first step towards a lawsuit. In a similar case, the Times filed a lawsuit last year against OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT-maker of stealing content to train its powerful AI with copyrighted material. News Corp, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and the Post, has signed a content agreement with OpenAI and the suit alleged that Perplexity ignored requests to enter into such partnerships.

Wall Street Journal and New York Post are suing Perplexity AI for copyright infringement

The News Corp. publications said the company is "freeriding" on the content they produce. The Wall Street Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, and the New York Post are suing AI-powered search startup Perplexity for using their content to train its large language models. Both News Corp. publications are accusing Perplexity of copyright infringement for using their articles to generate answers to people's queries, thereby taking traffic away from the publications' websites. "This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce," the publishers wrote in their complaint, according to the Journal. In their lawsuit, the publications argued that Perplexity can serve users not just snippets of copyrighted articles, but the whole thing, especially for those paying for its premium subscription plan. They cited an instance wherein the service allegedly served up the entirety of a New York Post piece when the user typed in "Can you provide the fultext of that article." In addition, the publications are accusing Perplexity of harming their brand by citing information that never appeared on their websites. The company's AI can hallucinate, they explained, and add incorrect details. In one instance, it allegedly attributed quotes to a Wall Street Journal article about the US arming Ukraine-bound F-16 jets that were never in the piece. The publications said they sent a letter to Perplexity in July to raise these legal issues, but the AI startup never responded. Various news organizations have sued AI companies in the past for copyright infringement. The New York Times, as well as The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet, sued OpenAI for using their content to train its LLMs. In its lawsuit, the Times said OpenAI and Microsoft "seek to free-ride" on its massive investment in journalism. Condé Nast previously sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity to demand that it stop using its publications' articles as responses to users' queries. And in June, Wired reported that Amazon had started investigating the AI company over reports that it scrapes websites without consent. News Corp. is asking the court to prohibit Perplexity from using its publications' content without permission, and it's also asking for damages of up to $150,000 for each incident of copyright infringement. Whether the company is willing to negotiate a content agreement remains to be seen -- News Corp. struck a licensing deal with OpenAI earlier this year, which allows the ChatGPT owner to use its websites' articles for training over the next five years in exchange for a reported $250 million.

Dow Jones says Perplexity is "freeriding," sues over copyright infringement

AI startup reportedly "did not bother to respond" to notice of infringement. Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and the New York Post have accused artificial intelligence start-up Perplexity of a "brazen scheme" to rip off their journalism for its AI-driven search engine in a lawsuit filed in New York on Monday. The publishers, both subsidiaries of News Corp, alleged the AI start-up, which is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in a funding round that will value it at $8 billion, was "engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying" of their work. The lawsuit said Perplexity is "diverting customers and critical revenues" away from the news publishers, whose titles include the Wall Street Journal, "freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce." Perplexity's search engine allows users to get instant answers to questions, with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. However, its "answer engine" copies on a "massive scale . . . copyrighted news content, analysis, and opinion as inputs into its internal database," the lawsuit said. These then generate responses to users' queries "that are intended to and do act as a substitute for news and other information websites," according to the lawsuit, whose claims include copyright infringement. The lawsuit is the latest clash between publishers and AI companies, which are keen to use content to train their models and provide up-to-date responses to users. Some, such as OpenAI, have signed commercial partnerships and licensing agreements with publishers, including News Corp and the Financial Times, which are among the newspapers that allow ChatGPT users to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links.

Wall Street Journal sues Perplexity AI for copyright infringement

Perplexity is one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups, whose AI powered search engine is often mentioned as a potential disruptor to Google.The lawsuit in a federal court in New York accuses Perplexity of illegally copying and reproducing copyrighted content from The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to power its AI-driven "answer engine."The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post filed a lawsuit in a US court on Monday against AI company Perplexity AI, alleging massive copyright infringement and trademark violations. Perplexity is one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups, whose AI powered search engine is often mentioned as a potential disruptor to Google. The lawsuit in a federal court in New York accuses Perplexity of illegally copying and reproducing copyrighted content from The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to power its AI-driven "answer engine." Perplexity. ai is a question-answering platform known for its minimalist and conversational interface. Unlike ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity's tool provides up-to-date answers that often include links to source materials, allowing users to verify information. And unlike a classic search engine, Perplexity provides ready-made answers on its webpage making it unnecessary for users to click through to the source website. According to the complaint, this constituted a "massive freeriding" on protected content that allowed the company to divert readers and revenue from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. "Unlike the business model of a traditional internet search engine, Perplexity's business model does not drive business toward content creators. To the contrary, it usurps content creators' monetization opportunities for itself," the lawsuit alleged. Perplexity, which is backed by Amazon-billionaire Jeff Bezos and AI juggernaut Nvidia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The complaint also accused Perplexity of damaging the publishers' brands by attributing false information to their publications. The publishers seek injunctive relief and statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringement. The plaintiffs are also requesting the destruction of any database containing their copyrighted works. The move follows similar allegations by The New York Times, which has sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, which is a first step towards a lawsuit. In a similar case, the Times filed a lawsuit last year against OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT-maker of stealing content to train its powerful AI with copyrighted material. News Corp, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and the Post, has signed a content agreement with OpenAI and the suit alleged that Perplexity ignored requests to enter into such partnerships.

Major publishers sue Perplexity AI for scraping content

Major US news publishers Dow Jones & Co and NYP Holdings have sued AI search engine startup Perplexity for scraping their content without paying for it. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of The Wall Street Journal and its sister tabloid New York Post by their parent company News Corporation, alleges two counts of copyright infringement and one of false designation of origin and dilution of trademarks. The plaintiffs accuse the AI biz of stealing the hard work of journalists to feed the data requirements of its training models. News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson claimed this could be the first of many such lawsuits against AI developers. "The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can 'skip the links' - apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check," he told The Register in a statement. "We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue - but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy." News Corp isn't against sharing its intellectual property to train AI systems - but it wants the money upfront. In May it inked a deal with the aforementioned OpenAI for just this purpose, with a reported price tag over $250 million. The machine learning juggernaut also has similar deals in place with Reddit and Stack Overflow. According to court documents [PDF] filed in the Southern District of New York District Court, News Corp first contacted Perplexity about the matter in July but received no response. It wants $150,000 for every proven infringement - which, if enforced, could severely impact or even bankrupt the startup. The news giant also isn't just peeved at the data scraping itself, but also that Perplexity doesn't cite its sources. It claimed that Perplexity's AI "answer engine" can "skip the links" and that this deprives publishers of direct revenue. Even worse, it gets things wrong. "In addition to using Plaintiffs' copyrighted work to develop a substitute product that reproduces or imitates Plaintiffs' original content, Perplexity also harms Plaintiffs' brands by falsely attributing to Plaintiffs certain content that Plaintiffs never wrote or published," the lawsuit claims. "Not infrequently, if Perplexity is asked about what Plaintiffs' publications reported, Perplexity 'answers' with false information. AI developers euphemistically call these factually incorrect outputs 'hallucinations.' Perplexity's hallucinations can falsely attribute facts and analysis to content producers like Plaintiffs, sometimes citing an incorrect source, and other times simply inventing and attributing to Plaintiffs fabricated news stories." One case cited is an August 2024 New York Post article about European attempts to "silence great Americans like Elon Musk." It claims Perplexity, when asked for a summary, copied the first 139 words of the piece, and then added five more paragraphs of factually incorrect information. On the data scraping side, there is a mechanism for website operators to opt out of adding their content to the voracious maw of AI training databases: the robots.txt file, implemented by Google, OpenAI, and Cloudflare. While Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has claimed his business does respect the do-not-scrape command, some third parties it uses might not be so ethical. Perplexity had no comment at the time of going to press. ®

News Corp Sues Perplexity AI, Wants It to Pay Up Like OpenAI

Two media companies are suing Perplexity AI for using their content without permission. Dow Jones & Company and NYP Holdings, which own a number of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, respectively, filed their combined lawsuit against Perplexity AI in New York on Monday, according to a copy of the lawsuit shared with PCMag. The companies, which are both owned by the Murdoch family under the News Corp banner, allege Perplexity is "engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders." The lawsuit argues that journalists at News Corp-owned outlets work hard and sometimes risk their own safety to break stories, with the goal of making the world a better place. But Perplexity is building a "substitute product" that rips off their hard work and "repackages" it, sometimes verbatim, from the original source. Even if the AI's outputs are substantially different from the source material, it doesn't matter because the AI's ingestion and storing of this data is a "massive copyright violation" in and of itself, according to the filing. It further argues that such well-established news outlets are tarnished by AI hallucinations when associated with factually incorrect information. It says the ways Perplexity pulls from and uses its data are not "fair use." PCMag has reached out to Perplexity for comment. Like The New York Times, Conde Nast, and Forbes, News Corp similarly sent a legal letter to Perplexity demanding it stop its activity, but adds that Perplexity "did not bother to respond," spurring its lawsuit. News Corp doesn't want Perplexity to repurpose or copy its content. Instead, it wants to strike usage deals like the one it's forged with OpenAI. "Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp," says News Corp CEO Robert Thomson in a statement. "The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can 'skip the links' -- apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check. "We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy," Thomson concludes. Perplexity -- which the WSJ reports could double its valuation to $8 billion soon -- frames its AI-powered site as an "answer engine," offering a query box like ChatGPT. But it differs from OpenAI's offering in that it also has a "Discover" tab, where AI-generated summaries of news stories appear. It pulls from existing, published news articles and generates short summaries with buttons to original sources. Users sometimes have to click on smaller icons to view a pop-out list of news sources. Forbes has criticized this, arguing that the sources and links to source material are not prominent enough and the AI startup is cranking out "knockoff stories." Perplexity, however, has repeatedly justified its behavior by referring to all news articles, including copyrighted material, as simply web content that falls under fair use rules. "We believe in transparency and have a public page on our website that clarifies our content policies and how we use web content," a Perplexity rep told PCMag last week when contacted about the New York Times dispute. "No one organization owns the copyright over facts," the spokesperson continued. "This is what allows us to have a rich and open information ecosystem, not to mention, it gives news organizations the ability to report on topics that were previously covered by another news outlet."

Murdoch firms Dow Jones and New York Post sue Perplexity AI

(Reuters) - Media baron Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI on Monday, claiming the AI startup engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. Perplexity's search tools enable users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It is powered by a variety of large language models (LLMs) that can sum up and generate information, from OpenAI to Meta's open-source model Llama. "This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce," read the lawsuit filed in the Southern District Of New York. Dow Jones and the New York Post are bringing two claims of copyright infringement. The news outlets accuse Perplexity of amassing massive quantities of its copyrighted into the database, which uses an AI technique known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide answers to users' queries, without permission or payment. Earlier this month, New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding it to stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Perplexity has also faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns put forward by publishers. Dow Jones and the New York Post are asking the court to stop Perplexity from using its news articles as the basis for providing answers to questions, and to order the destruction of any database using its copyright work. (Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski, Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Perplexity is sued by Dow Jones and 'New York Post' for copyright infringement

Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones, which is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post both sued AI search startup Perplexity on Monday for infringing copyrighted content. The News Corp.-owned companies accused Perplexity of a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their work. It marks the latest lawsuit in an ongoing battle between tech giants and media companies over the unapproved use of copyrighted content to train and build AI systems. The New York Times last week sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist notice that demanded the company stop accessing and using its content. Forbes and Conde Nast have also threatened legal action against the firm. "This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to complete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce," Monday's lawsuit stated.

Murdoch firms Dow Jones and New York Post sue Perplexity AI

Oct 21 (Reuters) - Media baron Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI on Monday, claiming the AI startup engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. Perplexity's search tools enable users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It is powered by a variety of large language models (LLMs) that can sum up and generate information, from OpenAI to Meta's open-source model Llama. Advertisement · Scroll to continue "This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce," read the lawsuit filed in the Southern District Of New York. Dow Jones and NY Post are owned by Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA.O), opens new tab. Perplexity did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters seeking comment. Dow Jones and the New York Post are bringing two claims of copyright infringement. The news outlets accuse Perplexity of amassing massive quantities of its copyrighted into the database, which uses an AI technique known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide answers to users' queries, without permission or payment. Advertisement · Scroll to continue They are asking the court to stop Perplexity from using its news articles as the basis for providing answers to questions, and to order the destruction of any database using its copyrighted work. "Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp," News Corp CEO Robert Thomson in a statement. "The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can 'skip the links' - apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check," he said. Earlier this month, New York Times sent Perplexity, opens new tab a "cease and desist" notice demanding it to stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Perplexity has also faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns put forward by publishers. Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Kenrick Cai in San Francisco Editing by Nick Zieminski Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

'Content kleptocracy': News Corp outlets sue Perplexity over scraped stories

News Corp's Dow Jones and the NY Post have sued growing AI startup Perplexity over what they describe as a "content kleptocracy." In a lawsuit filed in New York on Monday, the media organization claimed that Perplexity engages in copyright violations on a "grand scale," simultaneously duplicating and misrepresenting original content created by others: Its AI "answer engine" copies on a massive scale, among other things, copyrighted news content, analysis, and opinion as inputs into its internal database. It then uses that copyrighted content to generate responses to users' queries that are intended to and do act as a substitute for news and other information websites. Perplexity loudly touts that its answers to user queries are so reliable that its users can "Skip the Links" to the original publishers and instead rely wholly on Perplexity for their news and analysis needs. What Perplexity does not tout is that its core business model involves engaging in massive freeriding on Plaintiffs' protected content to compete against Plaintiffs for the engagement of the same news-consuming audience, and in turn to deprive Plaintiffs of critical revenue sources. They are far from the first to make this claim. Many news sites have expressed concerns that Perplexity closely replicates their content, with the occasionally egregious example like the Forbes piece called out this summer. Just last week the New York Times sent a cease and desist to Perplexity. Perplexity, for its part, tends to characterize its web scrapers as collecting data not for inclusion in AI training, but simply as an index for its models to refer to when attempting to answer a user's question. We've asked the company for comment and will update this post if we hear back. The fast-moving industry has skirted copyright law in general, but the unprecedented nature of large-scale AI agents and scrapers means that existing rules may not apply as one might intuitively expect. A number of lawsuits are in process alleging various forms of copyright infringement, but so far none has reached a conclusion on the matter. Each no doubt hopes it is filing the landmark lawsuit that breaks the back of big AI. "We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realise the potential of Artificial Intelligence," wrote News Corp CEO Robert Thomson issued a statement. (News Corp signed a lucrative multi-year content deal with OpenAI earlier this year.) "Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy. News Corp seeks $150,000 per infringement, plus Perplexity's profits on them, among other remedies -- that would lead to astronomical damages depending on how the evidence is interpreted.

Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post sue AI firm for 'illegal copying'

Publishers file suit against Perplexity AI, accusing startup of 'brazen scheme' and 'freeriding on valuable content' Media baron Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI on Monday, claiming the artificial intelligence startup engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a bitter ongoing battle between publishers and tech companies over how the latter may use copyrighted content without authorization to build and operate their AI systems. "This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce," according to the lawsuit filed in the southern district of New York by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones and the New York Post. Perplexity did not immediately respond to emails from Reuters seeking comment. The AI company is among the leading startups attempting to uproot the search engine market dominated by Alphabet's Google. It assembles information from webpages it deems to be authoritative, then provides a summary directly within Perplexity's own tool. Perplexity uses a variety of large language models (LLMs) to generate its summaries, from OpenAI to Meta's open-source model Llama. It provides citations in those results, though Perplexity's own marketing promotes the notion that its interface enables users to "skip the links". Google likewise now shows AI-generated summaries similar to those offered by Perplexity, though most publishers grudgingly accept that arrangement because opting out would also mean having their content removed from Google's search results, which would render them virtually invisible online. The news publishers seek to differentiate Perplexity from search engines, which they argue allow for the discovery of their work, not a substitution for it, according to the lawsuit. In the suit, the News Corp-owned publishers say their journalists investigate and write stories under tight deadlines and unpredictable circumstances. There is high demand for high-quality news presented in a timely, digestible format, and these publications rely on the sale of advertising and subscriptions to underwrite the cost of journalism, they argue. The news organizations allege Perplexity's AI-generated "answer machine" has ingested its copyrighted news stories, analysis and opinion in an internal database used to generate responses to users' questions. In its quest to provide answers, Perplexity copied "vast" quantities of the publishers' work into a database, which uses an AI technique known as retrieval-augmented generation (Rag) to provide answers to users' queries, the suit alleges. Perplexity formulates its responses in a way that, at times, reproduces the content verbatim, the news organizations claim. The suit alleges these actions constitute an unlawful copyright infringement. "Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp," News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement. With its lawsuit, News Corp is joining the ranks of multiple publishers that have sued AI companies for copyright infringement over their use of content without authorization, both to train algorithms and to generate summaries of real-time information. Earlier this month, the New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding it to stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Perplexity has also faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns put forward by publishers. Some publishers are signing licensing agreements with AI companies open to paying for content, although the sides often disagree over the value of the materials. Many AI developers argue they have broken no laws in accessing them for free. In May, News Corp announced it had struck a multi-year partnership with OpenAI, with Thomson applauding the tech company for understanding "that integrity and creativity are essential" to realize the potential of artificial intelligence.

Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones accuses Perplexity of 'brazen' infringement

Daniel Thomas in London and Cristina Criddle in San Francisco Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and the New York Post have accused Perplexity of a "brazen scheme" to rip off their journalism for its artificial intelligence-driven search engine in a lawsuit filed in New York on Monday. The publishers, both subsidiaries of News Corp, alleged the AI start-up, which is seeking to raise up to $1bn in a funding round that will value it at $8bn, was "engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying" of their work. The lawsuit said Perplexity is "diverting customers and critical revenues" away from the news publishers, whose titles include the Wall Street Journal, "freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce". Perplexity's search engine allows users to get instant answers to questions, with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. However, its "answer engine" copies on a "massive scale . . . copyrighted news content, analysis, and opinion as inputs into its internal database", the lawsuit said. These then generate responses to users' queries "that are intended to and do act as a substitute for news and other information websites", according to the lawsuit, whose claims include copyright infringement. The lawsuit is the latest clash between publishers and AI companies, which are keen to use content to train their models and provide up-to-date responses to users. Some, such as OpenAI, have signed commercial partnerships and licensing agreements with publishers, including News Corp and the Financial Times, which are among the newspapers that allow ChatGPT users to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links. However, publishers are also increasingly seeking legal action to block AI-driven search engines from illegally scraping copyrighted work. The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, and last week sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice telling the company to stop using its journalism, including creating summaries and other types of content. Monday's lawsuit also alleged Perplexity is harming the brands by falsely attributing certain content to them, and sometimes generating "answers" with false information. In July, the publishers sent a letter to the start-up, putting it on notice of the legal issues and offering to discuss a potential licensing deal, the lawsuit said, but Perplexity "did not bother to respond". "Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers, and News Corp," News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said. "The perplexing Perplexity has wilfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source." Forbes and Wired have accused Perplexity of plagiarism, with the latter branding the start-up "a Bullshit Machine" after an investigation reportedly showed it was "surreptitiously scraping" websites for data. Perplexity has previously told publishers it would stop using "crawling" technology, and has since launched a revenue-sharing initiative. The company is also planning to introduce advertising on to its platform, in a move that courts similar brands to news outlets in a hope to drive revenue. Perplexity did not immediately return a request for comment.

NY Post, Wall Street Journal sue Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI for...

The parent companies of The Post and The Wall Street Journal have filed suit against the Jeff Bezos-backed artificial intelligence firm Perplexity AI for allegedly engaging in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of the publications' copyrighted work. NYP Holdings, Inc. and Dow Jones, both of which are subsidiaries of News Corp, jointly filed the lawsuit against Perplexity AI in Manhattan federal court on Monday demanding that the firm cease using their news articles as the basis for answers to questions. The plaintiffs also want the court to order Perplexity to destroy any database that uses their copyrighted work. Perplexity is alleged to have amassed large quantities of copyrighted material into a database which users can access through an AI mechanism known as "retrieval-augmented generation" (RAG) in order to provide answers to users' queries -- without permission or payment. Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, blasted Perplexity for "an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp." "The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source," Thomson said in a statement. "Perplexity proudly states that users can 'skip the links' -- apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check." Perplexity, which bills itself as "a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question," was founded in 2022. The company aims to challenge Google by offering an AI-based search engine that is "part chatbot and part search engine." Earlier this year, the company reached 10 million monthly active users. Its most recent funding round valued the company at around $1 billion. The Journal on Sunday reported that Perplexity recently began fundraising talks in which it is looking to increase its valuation to at least $8 billion. One of the investors is Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world's richest people. The Post has sought comment from Perplexity. In June, Perplexity was accused of ripping off CNBC and Forbes content without payment or attribution. Last week, The New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. The news publisher said in the letter, a copy of which it shared with Reuters, that the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates copyright law. Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have been raising the alarm on chatbots that can comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for the user. Earlier this year, News Corp struck a multiyear deal to share news content with OpenAI for both training purposes and to answer questions from users. As part of the deal, OpenAI will have access to both fresh and archived material from News Corp.'s major news publications, including The Journal, Barron's, The Post, Australian publications such as The Daily Telegraph and others. "We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of Artificial Intelligence," Thomson said on Monday. "Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor." Thomson added that News Corp "would rather woo than sue...but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy."

News Corp sues Perplexity for ripping off WSJ and New York Post

Perplexity is an AI startup that trains its AI search models using content from around the web, allowing it to respond to user queries with a summary of its sources. As outlined in the lawsuit, Perplexity bills itself as a platform that lets users "skip the links" to online articles, which News Corp alleges drives "customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders." In addition to accusing Perplexity of reproducing some content "verbatim," News Corp also claims Perplexity can falsely attribute facts and analysis to the company's outlets, "sometimes citing an incorrect source, and other times simply inventing and attributing to Plaintiffs fabricated news stories." The lawsuit claims News Corp sent a letter to Perplexity about its "unauthorized" use of its content in July, but Perplexity "did not bother to respond."

Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones, New York Post Sue Jeff Bezos-Backed Perplexity For Copyright Infringement, Accuse AI Firm Of 'Massive Freeriding' - News (NASDAQ:NWSA)

Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and the New York Post have initiated legal proceedings against Jeff Bezos-backed AI firm Perplexity, alleging unauthorized use of their content and redirection of traffic to its platforms. What Happened: On Monday, the News Corp NWSA-owned entities claimed that Perplexity has been using their copyrighted material to train its AI, thereby enabling users to circumvent the publishers' websites, reported CNN. The lawsuit alleges that Perplexity's business model involves "massive freeriding" on the plaintiffs' protected content, competing for the same audience, and depriving them of crucial revenue sources. See Also: Nvidia's New Free, Open Source AI Model Reportedly Outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4o, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet News Corp CEO Robert Thomson accused Perplexity of copying large amounts of copyrighted material without compensation and presenting repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It Matters: The lawsuit comes on the heels of a cease-and-desist letter sent to Perplexity by The New York Times less than a week ago, demanding the startup stop using the newspaper's content. The Times also sued ChatGPT-parent OpenAI last year for copyright infringement, accusing the company of using its reporting to train its chatbots without permission. Earlier this year, News Corp signed a significant deal with OpenAI, licensing its news content in an agreement reported to be worth more than $250 million. Meanwhile, Perplexity has seen its valuation triple in the past year, aiming for an $8 billion valuation in its latest funding round. The AI startup has also been in talks with top-tier companies like Nike Inc. and Marriott International and is developing a "sponsored" question system to challenge Google's auction-based ads model. Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: Tim Cook Called To Complain About Billions In EU Fines Imposed On Apple, Says Trump: 'I'm Not Going To Let Them Take Advantage Of Our Companies' Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

New York Times takes aim at another AI company

The New York Times has sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, a hot AI startup often touted as a promising competitor to Google search, over alleged copyright infringement. The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, follows a Times lawsuit last year against OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT-maker of stealing content to train its powerful AI with copyrighted material. The Times' confrontational approach contrasts with many news outlets that have entered into content deals with platforms that crawled websites to enhance their technology without prior permission. In a letter seen by AFP dated October 2, the Times accused San Francisco-based Perplexity of unauthorized use of its copyrighted content in the company's artificial intelligence products. Perplexity.ai is an AI-powered search engine and question-answering platform known for its minimalist and conversational interface. Unlike ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity's tool provides up-to-date answers that often include links to source materials, allowing users to verify information. The letter, addressed to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, outlined several alleged violations, including breaches of the Times' Terms of Service, unauthorized circumvention of paywall measures, and unjust enrichment through the use of Times journalism without a license. The Times added that despite an assurance that Perplexity was no longer crawling its data, evidence suggested that it still was. It claimed that the AI company was using Times content through a technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) without permission. RAG allows AI systems to refine responses by pulling in relevant information from a database of existing content, enhancing up-to-date facts and data into an existing AI model. The newspaper gave Perplexity until October 30, 2024, to comply with its demands and put the company on notice to preserve all relevant documents related to its use of Times content. This signaled potential legal action if the matter is not resolved. Perplexity said it would reply to the letter, just as it had done when similarly approached by Forbes and Conde Nast. The spokesperson said that the company was not scraping data, "but rather indexing web pages and surfacing factual content..." "The law recognizes that no one organization owns the copyright over facts," the spokesperson added.

New York Times Sends Perplexity Cease-and-Desist Over AI Scraping

The New York Times has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity demanding the AI startup stop using its content, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday. "Perplexity and its business partners have been unjustly enriched by using, without authorization, The Times's expressive, carefully written and researched, and edited journalism without a license," the newspaper wrote in its legal letter, which gives Perplexity a deadline of Oct. 30 to respond. The paper accuses Perplexity of circumventing its anti-scraping and anti-bot measures. Its robots.txt page specifically disallows "PerplexityBot," the startup's scraping bot, though it's unclear if Perplexity uses others, as well, or other intermediary methods that indirectly pull from the outlet's content like a pre-collected dataset (PCMag's own robots.txt also disallows Perplexity). Robots.txt pages are rules that can be broken, however. So even if a site has one, "bad" bots can still scrape it. In response, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says the firm wants to collaborate with the Times. "We are very much interested in working with every single publisher, including The New York Times," Srinivas told WSJ. "We have no interest in being anyone's antagonist here." In June, a Perplexity rep told PCMag via email that its PerplexityBot "respects robots.txt." Because the bot runs on Amazon Web Services, Perplexity also said its scraping bot isn't "crawling in any way that violates AWS Terms of Service." But some tech and AI firms have also taken the stance that scraping any site they want constitutes "fair use," though that has yet to be proven in court. Many AI firms may also be desperate for fresh, human-generated data pilfered for free. One professor has warned that AI companies are "running out of text" on which to train their chatbots. Regardless of what Perplexity says it is or isn't doing, news outlets aren't happy. Condé Nast, which owns Wired, The New Yorker, and Vogue, previously sent Perplexity a cease and desist, alleging it's been scraping its sites and using that content for its own financial gain. Forbes has also fired shots at the AI firm, accusing it of theft and creating "knockoff stories" based on Forbes articles. Other AI firms have also come under fire for using copyrighted content without consent or payment. While many continue to scrape the web anyway, some have decided to strike content licensing deals with news outlets too. Associated Press, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Semafor, Business Insider, Dotdash Meredith, Vox Media, and even the WSJ itself are all part of AI licensing deals struck by their respective leaders or parent companies. Other news outlets, however, are trying to hold AI firms accountable for swiping their content without permission. The New York Times filed its lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft late last year, and remains ongoing. They've since exchanged some public jabs, with OpenAI accusing NYT of "hacking" ChatGPT, which the paper denies. Microsoft, similarly, has defended OpenAI, claiming the paper is boosting "doomsday futurology" with the lawsuit. In April, a collection of over half a dozen newspapers including the Orange County Register and the New York Daily News also sued OpenAI and Microsoft for similar reasons. Perplexity, specifically, has been criticized for using news outlets' stories to generate its own, without adequately citing or linking to its source material in a way that's clearly visible. Unsurprisingly, however, Perplexity doesn't see it that way.

News Corp Sues AI Search Startup Perplexity for Copyright Infringement

News Corp. on Monday sued artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity for allegedly "engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders," according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the case are Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Perplexity AI Faces Legal Action from NYT Over Unauthorized Content Use

The New York Times has issued a cease and desist notice to AI startup Perplexity, accusing the company of unauthorized use of its content for generative AI purposes. The New York Times has sent a cease and desist notice to AI startup Perplexity, demanding the company stop using its content for generative AI purposes. The move disclosed by Perplexity on Tuesday, adds to a growing number of legal clashes between media organizations and AI firms over content usage without permission. In the letter, dated October 2 and shared with Reuters, the Times stated that Perplexity's use of its content, including generating summaries and other outputs, violates copyright law. The newspaper accused the AI startup of continuing to use its material despite assurances that it would halt certain data-collection methods. Perplexity had previously told publishers it would cease "crawling" technologies to gather data but was still accused of improperly using NYT's content. Perplexity, a company that employs AI for the provision of answers to user's questions, defended its practices. The company in its defense stated it was not 'scraping' data for the purpose of setting up foundation models claiming that it was simply indexing websites and cite factual contents to answer queries made by users. Whose content doesn't avail like the New York times complaints raised, the content has been used without permission blocking such actions from happening. As a result, the newspaper sought data from Perplexity on how it was accessing the content of the paper and called for an urgent end to the unlawful use of its materials. Perplexity declared that it would likewise give a response before the stipulated deadline of 30th October 10th, therefore complying with the request. The controversy illustrates a continuing problem faced by news outlets in attempting to shield their material from unauthorized usage by AI corporations. This confrontation is, however, just one of many in the war between AI companies and media publishers which emanated from the introduction of AI models like . The New York Times and other media organizations have spoken out against the use of such systems which utilize content of the publishers for training purposes without compensating them.Earlier this year, the Times also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI accusing it of using millions of its articles to develop its chatbot. As AI evolves so do the laws pertaining to how content can be used, with companies such as Perplexity, which already attracted the ire of reporters from Forbes and Wired for allegedly plagiarizing other publications, now finding themselves under renewed scrutiny. In response to these allegations, Perplexity announced Main as the newest money making scheme now available for publishers, a profit sharing plan. Put at the outset the fact that even if there were resolutions reached concerning other issues, the Litigation, there are some outstanding claims.

News Corp Sues AI Company Perplexity Over Copyright Claims, Made Up Text

Lionsgate Plans 'Dirty Dancing' Stage Adaptation For Broadway Dow Jones, the parent company to the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post filed a lawsuit Monday against artificial intelligence company Perplexity, alleging that the company is illegally using copyrighted work. The suit alleges that Perplexity, which is an AI research and conversational search engine, draws on articles and other copyrighted content from the publishers to feed into its product and then repackages the content in its responses, or sometimes uses the content verbatim, without linking back to the articles. The engine can also be used to display several paragraphs or entire articles, when asked. In some cases, the suit alleges, the engine also adds made-up text that was not part of the original article. "Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp. The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can "skip the links" - apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check," Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, said in a statement. In his statement Thomson noted that the company had made a licensing agreement with AI platform OpenAI - as have many other publishers - and that he would rather "woo than sue." The suit claims that in 2024 Dow Jones and The New York Post had sent a letter to Perplexity to raise these concerns and also discuss a possible licensing deal, but that letter was not answered. "We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realise the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy," the statement continued. The plaintiffs are asking that Perplexity be enjoined from copying work without the publishers' authorization and be made to destroy any index or database that uses that work as well as any copies of the work. The suit also seeks $150,000 for each infringement, damages and Perplexity's profits for each infringement.

The New York Times warns AI search engine Perplexity to stop using its content

The New York Times has demanded that AI search engine startup Perplexity stop using content from its site in a cease and desist letter sent to the company, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Times, which is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft over allegedly illegally training models on its content, says the startup has been using its content without permission, a claim made earlier this year by Forbes and Condé Nast. The WSJ included this passage from the letter: "Perplexity and its business partners have been unjustly enriched by using, without authorization, The Times's expressive, carefully written and researched, and edited journalism without a license." The New York Times prohibits using its content for AI model training. It disallows several AI crawlers, including Perplexity's, in its robots.txt file that tells search engine crawlers which URLs they can index. The New York Times In a statement from Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick, the company says it doesn't scrape content for AI training but also argues that "no one organization owns the copyright over facts" to defend what it says is "indexing web pages and surfacing factual content." It plans to respond to the notice by the Times' deadline of October 30th. Perplexity: We believe in transparency and have a public page on our website that clarifies our content policies and how we use web content. We aren't scraping data for building foundation models, but rather indexing web pages and surfacing factual content as citations to inform responses when a user asks a question. The law recognizes that no one organization owns the copyright over facts. This is what allows us to have a rich and open information ecosystem, not to mention, it gives news organizations the ability to report on topics that were previously covered by another news outlet. Following the plagiarism accusations over the summer, Perplexity made some publisher deals, offering ad revenue and free subscriptions to partners that include Fortune, Time, and The Texas Tribune. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told the Journal that Perplexity has "no interest in being anyone's antagonist here" and is interested in "working with every single publisher, including the New York Times."

A Lawsuit Against Perplexity Calls Out Fake News Hallucinations

A new lawsuit brought against the startup Perplexity argues that, in addition to violating copyright law, it's breaking trademark law by making up fake sections of news stories and falsely attributing the words to publishers. Dow Jones (the publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and the New York Post -- both owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp -- brought the copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity today in the US Southern District of New York. This is not the first time Perplexity has run afoul of news publishers; earlier this month, The New York Times sent the company a cease-and-desist letter stating that it was using the newspaper behemoth's content without permission. This summer, both Forbes and WIRED detailed how Perplexity appeared to have plagiarized stories. Both Forbes and WIRED parent company Condé Nast sent the company cease-and-desist letters in response. A WIRED investigation from this summer, cited in this lawsuit, detailed how Perplexity inaccurately summarized WIRED stories, including one instance in which it falsely claimed that WIRED had reported on a California-based police officer committing a crime he did not commit. The WSJ reported earlier today that Perplexity is seeking to raise $500 million is its next funding round, at an $8 billion valuation. Dow Jones and the New York Post provide examples of Perplexity allegedly "hallucinating" fake sections of news stories. In AI terms, hallucination is when generative models produce false or wholly fabricated material and present it as fact. In one case cited, Perplexity Pro first regurgitated, word for word, two paragraphs from a New York Post story about US Senator Jim Jordan sparring with European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton over Elon Musk and X, but then followed them up with generated five paragraphs about free speech and online regulation that were not in the real article. The lawsuit claims that mixing in these made-up paragraphs with real reporting and attributing it to the Post is trademark dilution that potentially confuses readers. "Perplexity's hallucinations, passed off as authentic news and news-related content from reliable sources (using Plaintiffs' trademarks), damage the value of Plaintiffs' trademarks by injecting uncertainty and distrust into the newsgathering and publishing process, while also causing harm to the news-consuming public," the complaint states.

The New York Times tells Perplexity to stop using its content

One of the nation's largest newspapers is targeting another AI firm for reusing its content without its permission. reported that the New York Times sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, the AI startup funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The letter states that Perplexity's use of the New York Times' content to create answers and summaries with its AI portal violates copyright law. The letter states that Perplexity and its backers "have been unjustly enriched by using, without authorizations, The Times' expressive, carefully written and researched, and edited journalism without a license" and gave the startup until October 30 to respond before taking legal action. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told the Journal that they aren't ignoring the notice. He added they are "very much interested in working with every single publisher, including the New York Times." This isn't the first time an AI company has earned the wrath of the New York Times' legal team. The newspaper took to court over claims that both used articles from its pages to train its AI software. The suit alleges both companies used more than 66 million records across its archives to train its AI modes representing "almost a century's worth of copyrighted content." also started an investigation over the summer into Perplexity AI. reported that a machine hosted on Amazon Web Services and operated by Perplexity visited hundreds of Condé Nast publications and properties hundreds of times to scan for content to use in its response and data collections.

NYT Sends AI Startup Perplexity 'Cease and Desist' Notice Over Content Use

Perplexity plans to respond by an October 30 deadline set by the NYT The New York Times has sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes, the startup said on Tuesday, marking the latest clash between the news publisher and an AI firm. The news publisher said in the letter, a copy of which it shared with Reuters, that the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates copyright law. NYT declined to provide additional comment on the matter. Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have been raising the alarm on chatbots that can comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for the user. In the letter to Perplexity dated Oct. 2, NYT demanded the AI firm "immediately cease and desist all current and future unauthorized access and use of The Times's content." It also asked Perplexity to provide information on how it is accessing the publisher's website despite its prevention efforts. Perplexity had previously assured publishers it would stop using "crawling" technology, according to the letter. Despite this, NYT said its content still appears in Perplexity. "We are not scraping data for building foundation models, but rather indexing web pages and surfacing factual content as citations to inform responses when a user asks a question," Perplexity told Reuters. The startup also said it plans to respond by an Oct. 30 deadline set by NYT to provide the requested information. NYT is also tussling with OpenAI, which it had sued late last year, accusing the firm of using millions of its newspaper articles without permission to train its AI chatbot. Earlier this year, Reuters reported multiple AI companies were bypassing a web standard used by publishers to block the scraping of their data used in generative AI systems. Perplexity faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns put forward by publishers.

NYT sends AI startup Perplexity 'cease and desist' notice over content use, WSJ reports

Oct 15 (Reuters) - The New York Times has sent generative AI startup Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using its content, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The letter from the news publisher said the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates its rights under copyright law, the report said. Perplexity and New York Times did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Advertisement · Scroll to continue NYT is also tussling with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which it had sued late last year, accusing the firm of using millions of its newspaper articles without permission to train its AI chatbot. Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

NYT sends AI startup Perplexity 'cease and desist' notice over content use, WSJ reports

(Reuters) - The New York Times has sent generative AI startup Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using its content, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The letter from the news publisher said the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates its rights under copyright law, the report said. Perplexity and New York Times did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. NYT is also tussling with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which it had sued late last year, accusing the firm of using millions of its newspaper articles without permission to train its AI chatbot. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

The New York Times has had it with generative AI companies using its content | TechCrunch

The New York Times sent a cease and desist letter demanding that Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity stop accessing and using its content in AI summaries and other output. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the document. The letter argues that Perplexity has been "unjustly enriched" by using the publisher's "expressive, carefully written and researched, and edited journalism without a license," which it says violates copyright laws. This isn't the paper's first tangle with AI companies - it's suing OpenAI for using content without consent to train ChatGPT. Other publishers have also accused Perplexity of unethical web scraping. A recent study from Copyleaks, a tool to check for plagiarism and AI-generated content, found that Perplexity was able to summarize paywalled content from publishers. Perplexity recently launched an ad-revenue share scheme to give some money back to publishers. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told WSJ the startup is interested in working with the NYT, stating, "We have no interest in being anyone's antagonist here."

NYT Sends AI Startup Perplexity 'Cease and Desist' Notice Over Content Use, WSJ Reports

(Reuters) - The New York Times has sent generative AI startup Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using its content, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The letter from the news publisher said the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates its rights under copyright law, the report said. Perplexity and New York Times did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. NYT is also tussling with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which it had sued late last year, accusing the firm of using millions of its newspaper articles without permission to train its AI chatbot. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

NYT Issues Cease and Desist notice to Perplexity for AI Scraping

Disclaimer: This content generated by AI & may have errors or hallucinations. Edit before use. Read our Terms of use The New York Times (NYT) has issued a "cease and desist" notice to Perplexity, an AI startup supported by Jeff Bezos, demanding the company stop using its content for generative AI purposes. This marks the latest conflict between NYT and AI firms over alleged copyright infringement. NYT claimed that Perplexity's use of its content -- such as creating summaries -- violates copyright law, as reported by WSJ. NYT asked Perplexity to clarify how it accesses its website despite its efforts to block such activity. Although Perplexity had previously assured the publisher that it would cease using "crawling" technology, the NYT said that its content still appeared on the platform. In response, Perplexity stated, "We are not scraping data for building foundation models, but rather indexing web pages and surfacing factual content as citations to inform responses when a user asks a question." The AI startup plans to respond to the publication by October 30, after which a potential legal confrontation could arise. Further, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says the firm wants to collaborate with the NYT. "We are very much interested in working with every single publisher, including The New York Times," Srinivas told WSJ. "We have no interest in being anyone's antagonist here," he added. A spokesperson for Perplexity noted, as per the WSJ report, that no single organisation can claim copyright over facts. Previously, Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations including Forbes and Wired of plagiarizing their content, but has since launched revenue-sharing mechanisms to address some concerns put forward by publishers. This isn't the first time NYT is suing AI platforms over copyright infringement. In December 2023, NYT had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the AI company of using millions of its newspapers articles without consent to train its AI chatbot. The case remains ongoing. Since then, they have exchanged jabs, with OpenAI accusing NYT of "hacking" ChatGPT, which the publication denies. In its 35-page filing, OpenAI stated that the individuals were able to achieve this by targeting and exploiting a bug -- which OpenAI has committed to fix -- by using misleading prompts that clearly violate its terms of use. However, OpenAI did not specify further who it believes 'hacked' ChatGPT. Microsoft has backed OpenAI, asserting that the lawsuit filed by NYT against them fuels "doomsday futurology." This approach from NYT lies in contrast with other news outlets such as Associated Press, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Semafor, Business Insider, Dotdash Meredith, Vox Media, and WSJ, all of which have signed AI licensing deals. In recent years, publishers have been increasingly raising concerns about chatbots that can comb through the internet to find information to create paragraph summaries for the user. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that several AI companies were circumventing a web standard used by publishers to prevent data scraping for generative AI systems. Some tech and AI firms argue that scraping content from 'open' websites falls under "fair use", though this has yet to be proven in court. Last month, Cloudflare launched its AI Audit tools, enabling websites to control how AI accesses their content. Moreover, it is also developing methods for publishers to monetize AI interest in their data, facilitating content protection into a potential revenue stream. Cloudflare's solution allows website owners to block chatbots en masse, streamlining the process of protecting one's content.

Perplexity Gets 'Cease and Desist' Notice From the New York Times

The New York Times has sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes, the startup said on Tuesday, marking the latest clash between the news publisher and an AI firm. The news publisher said in the letter, a copy of which it shared with Reuters, that the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates copyright law. NYT declined to provide additional comment on the matter.

NY Times Sends Perplexity a Cease and Desist Letter

The New York Times Company sent AI startup Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding that the firm stop using its content, the Wall Street Journal reported. The letter follows a lawsuit filed by the Times against OpenAI at the end of last year, alleging copyright infringement in how the ChatGPT creator used NY Times content in training of its large language models. Other publishers,

How Damaging Are AI News Summaries to Publishers?

What Happened to Outfest? Film Festival's Former Top Exec Sues Over Its Collapse As AI companies hoover up troves of content across the internet, search traffic is positioned as the next front in the tug-of-war between publishers and Big Tech. Media organizations are pushing to shape the tools that create AI-generated summaries of their news stories, sometimes without attribution or citation, allowing users to bypass their articles. The New York Times has sent generative AI startup Perplexity, backed by Jeff Bezos and YouTube's ex-chief executive, a cease and desist for copying its articles and using them to create summaries of articles. The publisher says the practice constitutes "egregious and ongoing violations" of its intellectual property rights since the answers are "substitutive of our protected works." So far, most battles in the AI world have largely revolved around the use of copyrighted content to train large language models, the systems that power ChatGPT and other chatbots. But publishers also take issue with AI firms ripping off their reporting in response to search queries. This has played a part in prompting media organizations to ink deals with OpenAI and other AI firms, including Perplexity. A major component of these agreements, which could also feature much-needed financial windfalls amid a declining media landscape, is citations and direct links to content from publishers used to answer queries. In a recent deal between the Sam Altman-led firm and Hearst, OpenAI said that this will provide "transparency and easy access to the original" sources. In a statement, Hearst Magazines president Debi Chirichella said the partnership will "help us evolve the future of magazine content." She added, "This collaboration ensures that our high-quality writing and expertise, cultural and historical context and attribution and credibility are promoted as OpenAI's products evolve." Publishers that've reached similar arrangements with OpenAI include Axel Springer, owner of Politico and Business Insider; News Corp.; The Associated Press; the Financial Times; Vox Media; and The Atlantic. Hearst Newspapers president Jeff Johnson stressed the synergy in these types of deals in manufacturing "more timely and relevant results." The legal waters are muddy. Under intellectual property laws, facts aren't copyrightable. It's the arrangement and composition of facts that are protected. This means that journalists are free to report common details without concern of infringement as long as they aren't copying excerpts word-for-word. That principle is among the reasons that the Times may face an uphill battle in its lawsuit against OpenAI, though the production of evidence of ChatGPT generating verbatim responses of its articles may get it over the hump. Fair use, which allows for works to be utilized in certain circumstances without a license, will be a key battleground. In May, a major trade group representing the news industry urged lawmakers to intervene in Google's expansion of AI Overviews, which combines answers generated from AI systems alongside snippets of text from linked websites. The tool "will further entrench Google's monopoly power while starving digital publishers of monetization opportunities to fund high-quality, original content," the letter stated. In response to the Times' letter, Perplexity maintained in a statement that it's on solid legal footing. "The law recognizes that no one organization owns the copyright over facts," it said. "This is what allows us to have a rich and open information ecosystem, not to mention, it gives news organizations the ability to report on topics that were previously covered by another news outlet." This isn't Perplexity's first time rankling a publisher. Earlier this year, Forbes threatened legal action against the AI firm for ripping off its work without attribution. The dispute related to the company publishing an AI-generated version of a story about a Forbes investigative piece on former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, followed up by an AI-generated podcast, which was then turned into a YouTube video. That video outranked Forbes' article on Google search. Perplexity chief executive Aravind Srinivas told the Associated Press at the time that it's "actually more of an aggregator of information" rather than a news outlet. Publishers have reason to worry. More than a decade ago, the normalization of tech companies carrying content created by news organizations without directly paying them -- cannibalizing readership and ad revenue -- precipitated the decline of the media industry. With the rise of generative AI, those same firms threaten to further tilt the balance of power between Big Tech and news.