The New York Times, Chicago Tribune sue Perplexity
The New York Times is suing the AI search engine startup Perplexity, alleging repeated copyright violations.
In the complaint, the Times accuses Perplexity of scraping the company’s content and generating outputs that are “identical or substantially similar” to Times content:
“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”
The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.
In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.
Perplexity’s “answer engine” made early inroads in an attempt to replace traditional web searches with AI-powered responses, but its larger competitors such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have been adding similar features. OpenAI recently released its own AI-powered web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, which challenges Perplexity’s Comet browser.
Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:
“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”
“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”
The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.
In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.
Perplexity’s “answer engine” made early inroads in an attempt to replace traditional web searches with AI-powered responses, but its larger competitors such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have been adding similar features. OpenAI recently released its own AI-powered web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, which challenges Perplexity’s Comet browser.
Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:
“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”