The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the AI search engine unlawfully copied and distributed its copyrighted content.
The complaint accuses Perplexity of scraping millions of articles, including those behind the Times’ paywall, to generate summaries and answers that often reproduce the original text verbatim.
The Times argues that this practice undermines its subscription business and threatens its ability to fund high-quality journalism.
This legal action follows unsuccessful attempts by the Times to negotiate a licensing agreement with Perplexity.
The startup, which recently reached a valuation of $20 billion, has positioned itself as a direct competitor to traditional search engines by providing direct answers sourced from the web.
Perplexity has previously stated that it indexes web pages rather than scraping them for model training.
Still, the lawsuit claims its methods violate copyright laws by creating a substitute for the original reporting without permission or payment.
Key Takeaways:
- The New York Times is suing Perplexity for scraping and reproducing its articles.
- The lawsuit claims Perplexity’s AI products bypass the Times’ paywall.
- Perplexity is currently valued at $20 billion and faces similar suits from other publishers.
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