News Corp's Dow Jones and the NY Post have sued growing AI startup Perplexity over what they call “content theft politics.”
In a lawsuit filed in New York on Monday, the media organization alleges that Perplexity engages in copyright infringement on a “massive scale” while simultaneously copying and misrepresenting original content created by others. he claimed.
Its AI “response engine” extensively copies, among other things, copyrighted news content, analysis, and opinion into an internal database as input. That copyrighted content is then used to generate responses to user queries that are intended to serve as an alternative to news and other information websites. Perplexity touts that its answers to user queries are so reliable that users can “skip the link” to the original publisher and rely entirely on Perplexity for their news and analysis needs. I am. What Perplexity does not advertise is that its core business model is to compete with plaintiffs for audience participation in consuming the same news by taking massive free rides on plaintiffs' protected content; , which involves depriving plaintiffs of a significant source of revenue.
They were not the first to make this claim. Many news sites have expressed concern that Perplexity is closely replicating their content, with occasional egregious examples like the Forbes article from this summer. Just last week, the New York Times issued a cease-and-desist order against Perplexity.
Perplexity tends to characterize its web scrapers as collecting data not for inclusion in AI training, but simply as an index for models to reference when answering user questions. We have reached out to the company for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
Fast-moving industries have generally circumvented copyright law, but the unprecedented nature of large-scale AI agents and scrapers may mean that existing rules do not apply as intuitively expected. . Numerous lawsuits alleging various forms of copyright infringement are ongoing, but so far none have reached a conclusion on this issue. There is no doubt that everyone is hoping to file a groundbreaking lawsuit that will break the back of big AI.
“We applaud principled companies like OpenAI that understand that integrity and creativity are essential to realizing the potential of artificial intelligence,” said News Corp CEO Robert Thomson. He 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, nor is it the only AI company we pursue vigorously and rigorously. We have made it clear that we would rather persuade than litigate. But for the sake of journalists, writers, and companies, we must fight back against the politics of content theft.
News Corp is seeking $150,000 for each infringement, plus profits from Perplexity, and other relief, which could amount to astronomical damages depending on how the evidence is interpreted.