The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, and the New York Post have sued AI-powered search startup Perplexity for using their content to train its big language models.
Both News Corp. publications are accusing Perplexity of copyright infringement for using their articles to generate answers to people’s questions, thereby driving traffic away from the publications’ websites.
“This lawsuit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while at the same time hitching a free ride on valuable content produced by publishers,” the publishers wrote in their complaint, according to the Journal.
In their suit, the publications argued that Perplexity could provide users with not just snippets of copyrighted articles, but the whole thing, especially for those who pay for its premium subscription plan. They cited an example in which the service allegedly presented the entirety of a New York Post piece when the user typed “can you provide the full text of that article.”
In addition, publications are accusing Perplexity of harming their brand by citing information that never appeared on their websites. They pointed out that the company’s AI can cause confusion and add false details.
In one case, it allegedly quoted a Wall Street Journal article about arming F-16 jets headed to Ukraine, which was never in the article. The publications said they sent a letter to Perplexity in July to raise these legal issues, but the AI startup never responded.
Various news organizations have sued AI companies in the past for copyright infringement. The New York Times, as well as The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet, sued OpenAI for using their content to train its LLM.
In its lawsuit, the Times said OpenAI and Microsoft want to “free ride” on its massive investment in journalism. Condé Nast previously sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter demanding it stop using articles from its publications as answers to users’ questions.
And in June, Wired reported that Amazon had launched an investigation into the AI company over reports of scraping websites without consent.
News Corp has asked the court to prevent Perplexity from using content from its publications without permission, and it is also seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each instance of copyright infringement.
Whether the company is willing to negotiate a content agreement remains to be seen — News Corp struck a licensing deal with OpenAI earlier this year that allows the ChatGPT owner to use articles from its websites for training over the next five years in exchange for a reported $250 million.