News Corp alleges that Perplexity violated copyright laws by using its content to respond to users’ queries|Perplexity.ai
A day after Perplexity’s plans for more funding made headlines, the AI startup was hit with a lawsuit from News Corp-owned Dow Jones and the New York Post, accusing the AI startup of illegally using copyrighted content to generate AI-based summaries, undermining the work of news publishers.
According to the case, Perplexity’s AI pulls “vast quantities” of news stories into a database to answer user queries, often reproducing content verbatim, which the publishers argue is copyright infringement.
Perplexity, founded two years ago, creates summaries using large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and Meta’s Llama.
However, its “skip the links” feature prevents users from visiting the original articles, reducing traffic and revenue for news sites.
The plaintiffs seek to halt Perplexity’s use of their content and demand the destruction of databases containing their work. They also mentioned sending notices of legal repercussions to the startup in July and offering to discuss a potential licensing deal, which wasn’t responded to.
Other legal woes
The lawsuit follows multiple legal actions against Perplexity from media companies, including The New York Times (which sent a cease-and-desist to the tech company last week), Forbes, Wired, and Conde Nast.
It highlights growing tensions between publishers and AI firms over the unauthorized use of copyrighted material to train algorithms and generate summaries.
However, News Corp signed a licensing deal worth $250 million with OpenAI to use its content to train the AI company’s model. The ChatGPT-maker has also penned similar deals with the Associated Press, Axel Springer and Financial Times.