HomeWinBuzzer NewsPerplexity AI Faces Legal Action from New York Times

Perplexity AI Faces Legal Action from New York Times

Perplexity AI is accused of accessing and summarizing articles from the New York Times and other publishers without proper authorization.

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The New York Times has ordered Perplexity AI, a search engine startup backed by Jeff Bezos, to stop using its content in summaries and other outputs, citing unauthorized use and copyright infringement.

The newspaper sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, asserting that the company has profited from its carefully crafted journalism without permission, a violation of copyright laws. The letter argues that Perplexity has been “unjustly enriched” by utilizing the Times’ content without a license.

Perplexity AI is accused of accessing and summarizing articles from the New York Times and other publishers without proper authorization, leading to allegations of unethical web scraping and misuse of protected material.

Perplexity AI offers an AI-powered search and answer engine that provides direct and concise answers to user queries using large language models. It enhances the search experience by delivering accurate information with relevant citations from multiple sources.

Publishers Challenge Perplexity’s Practices

This confrontation is not the first between Perplexity AI and major media outlets. Forbes, Wired, and Condé Nast have previously accused the startup of replicating their articles without appropriate attribution. Forbes journalists discovered that Perplexity had produced content closely mirroring their own work, lacking proper credit to the original authors.

To address these issues, Perplexity introduced a revenue-sharing initiative aimed at benefiting content creators and established partnerships with several publishers. The company’s advertising strategy involves a CPM model with rates much higher than average, targeting key categories like technology, health, entertainment, finance, and food. This initiative offers ad revenue and free subscriptions to partner publishers, which include Fortune, Time, and The Texas Tribune.

Perplexity’s Position on Content Use

Perplexity maintains that it does not scrape data for building AI models but indexes web pages to provide factual content as citations in response to user queries. “We believe in transparency,” said Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick, emphasizing that no single organization owns the copyright over facts. The company argues that its practices are akin to indexing web content to inform users.

CEO Aravind Srinivas expressed interest in collaborating with the New York Times, stating, “We have no interest in being anyone’s antagonist here.” He indicated a willingness to work with all publishers to address their concerns.

Legal Measures and Publisher Policies

The New York Times prohibits the use of its content for AI model training and explicitly disallows several AI crawlers, including Perplexity’s, in its robots.txt file. The newspaper contends that Perplexity has ignored these restrictions, leading to unauthorized use of its journalism.

The cease and desist letter demands a response from Perplexity by October 30th, signaling potential legal action if the issue is not resolved. This move follows the Times’ earlier lawsuit against OpenAI for using its content without consent to train ChatGPT.

Perplexity AI has experienced rapid growth, with over 2 million app downloads and 230 million monthly users. In April, the startup’s valuation exceeded $1 billion following a new funding round, highlighting its significant presence in the AI search industry.

Ongoing Debate Over AI and Journalism

The dispute between the New York Times and Perplexity AI underscores ongoing ethical concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in journalism. As AI companies expand their capabilities, publishers are increasingly scrutinizing how their content is accessed and utilized. The involvement of prominent investors like Jeff Bezos adds further complexity to the dialogue on AI’s role in the media industry.

Some major publishers have already struck deals with OpenAi and other AI startups, in the hope they at least get some compensation for their work. In June, TIME and OpenAI have entered into a multi-year collaboration that grants the AI developer access to TIME’s comprehensive archive of historical and current articles. The deal adds to similar content licensing agreements with major publishers such as the ones already signed with The Atlantic and Vox MediaNews Corp, and the Financial Times.

History of Legal Spats Over AI Training

In May, Eight prominent newspapers owned by investment firm Alden Global Capital initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft. The core of the lawsuit is the allegation that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot, have been trained on copyrighted news articles without obtaining permission or offering compensation to the publishers.

The lawsuit follows a similar action taken by the New York Times against the same companies, accusing them of similar copyright infringements. Last year, Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey accused both OpenAI and Meta of copyright infringement.

Similarly, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in June 2023. The lawsuit not only demands compensation for the alleged copyright violations but also urges the court to prevent OpenAI from continuing what they deem as “unlawful and unfair business practices.”

In July the same year, a group of leading news publishers also considered suing AI companies over copyright infringement. The publishers allege that the AI firms are infringing on their intellectual property rights and undermining their business model by scraping, summarizing, or rewriting their articles and distributing them on various platforms, such as websites, apps, or social media.

According to research by the Reuters Institute, audiences show varying levels of comfort with AI in the news, often starting with skepticism regarding generative AI in journalism. However, acceptance increases when AI is used to support rather than replace human journalists, such as in automating tasks like transcription and formatting.

Last Updated on November 7, 2024 2:32 pm CET

Markus Kasanmascheff
Markus Kasanmascheff
Markus has been covering the tech industry for more than 15 years. He is holding a Master´s degree in International Economics and is the founder and managing editor of Winbuzzer.com.

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