News Corp sued Perplexity for copying the WSJ and the New York Post.
Perplexity is accused of having copied certain texts literally.
News Corp, the parent company of several media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, has filed a lawsuit against the artificial intelligence search engine, Perplexity, for alleged copyright infringement. According to the lawsuit filed on Monday, News Corp claims that Perplexity is copying news articles, analyses, and opinions “on a massive scale.”
Perplexity is an AI startup that trains its search models using content available on the web, allowing it to respond to user queries with a summary of its sources. The complaint argues that Perplexity presents itself as a platform that allows users to “jump the links” to online articles, which News Corp contends diverts “critical customers and revenue from copyright holders.”
In addition to accusing Perplexity of reproducing content “verbatim,” News Corp claims that the platform may incorrectly attribute facts and analyses to its outlets, “sometimes citing the wrong source and other times simply inventing and attributing fictitious news to the Plaintiffs.” The lawsuit notes that News Corp sent a letter to Perplexity in July regarding its “unauthorized” use of its content, but Perplexity “failed to respond.”
In recent months, other media outlets such as Wired and Forbes have also accused Perplexity of extracting content without permission, bypassing paywalls, and even plagiarizing written works. Last week, the New York Times, which is also suing OpenAI, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity asking it to stop using its content. For its part, Perplexity has begun paying some publishers for their content, such as Time and Fortune.
News Corp seeks to have the court order Perplexity to cease using its content without permission and to destroy any databases containing its works. Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, stated that “Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers, and News Corp.” Thomson added that the company has deliberately copied large amounts of copyrighted material without compensation and presents this reused material as a direct substitute for the original source. He also expressed recognition for “principled” companies like OpenAI that have reached agreements with various media, including News Corp, to use their work in training artificial intelligence.
