NY Post, Wall Street Journal sue Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI
The parent companies of The Post and the Wall Street Journal have filed suit against the Jeff Bezos-backed artificial intelligence firm Perplexity AI for allegedly engaging in a “massive amount of illegal copying” of the publications’ copyrighted work.
NYP Holdings Inc. and Dow Jones, both of which are subsidiaries of News Corp, jointly filed the lawsuit against Perplexity AI in Manhattan federal court Monday, demanding that the firm cease using their news articles as the basis for answers to questions.
The plaintiffs also want the court to order Perplexity to destroy any database that uses their copyrighted work.
Perplexity is alleged to have amassed large quantities of copyrighted material into a database that users can access through an AI mechanism known as “retrieval-augmented generation” (RAG) in order to provide answers to users’ queries — without permission or payment.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, blasted Perplexity for “an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp.”
“The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source,” Thomson said in a statement.
“Perplexity proudly states that users can ‘skip the links’ — apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check.”
In one example cited in the lawsuit, the chatbot allegedly spit out an entire Post story about a writer’s first Mets game at Shea Stadium when prompted with the question, “Can you provide the full text of that article?”
Perplexity, which bills itself as “a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question,” was founded in 2022. The company aims to challenge Google by offering an AI-based search engine that is “part chatbot and part search engine.”
Earlier this year, the company reached 10 million monthly active users. Its most recent funding round valued the company at around $1 billion.
The Journal on Sunday reported that Perplexity recently began fundraising talks in which it is looking to increase its valuation to at least $8 billion.
One of the investors is Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people.
The Post has sought comment from Perplexity. In June, Perplexity was accused of ripping off CNBC and Forbes content without payment or attribution.
Last week, the New York Times sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.
The news publisher said in the letter, a copy of which it shared with Reuters, that the way Perplexity was using its content, including to create summaries and other types of output, violates copyright law.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have been raising the alarm on chatbots that can comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for the user.
Earlier this year, News Corp struck a multiyear deal to share news content with OpenAI for both training purposes and to answer questions from users.
As part of the deal, OpenAI will have access to both fresh and archived material from News Corp’s major news publications, including the Journal, Barron’s, The Post, Australian publications such as the Daily Telegraph and others.
“We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of Artificial Intelligence,” Thomson said on Monday.
“Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor.”
Thomson added that News Corp “would rather woo than sue … but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy.”
With Post wires
