The New York Post and Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, sued Perplexity AI on Monday, claiming the artificial intelligence startup has illegally ripped off a “massive amount” of its reporting.
Perplexity’s “answer engine” is accused of violating copyright laws by giving its users verbatim or near verbatim responses that came directly from the outlets, which are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Users spent $20 per month to access Perplexity’s AI-generated summaries of the news, which ultimately diverted “customers and critical revenues away” from the Post and WSJ, the lawsuit claims.
“Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity’s own words, allows users to ‘Skip the Links’ to original publishers’ websites,” the lawsuit, obtained by TheWrap, said. “Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.”
Additionally, the suit was “brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce.”
Perplexity did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The San Francisco-based AI company was founded in 2022 and has received financial backing from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. Perplexity is currently looking to raise $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal this past weekend.
The New York Post and Dow Jones are seeking “up to and including $150,000 for each infringement, actual damages and Perplexity’s profits, for each infringement including each unauthorized digital copy or other content derived.”
Other major publishers have been irritated with Perplexity recently, too, with The New York Times sending a cease and desist notice last week, demanding the company stop using its content.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this reporting.
