Davide Bonaldo | Light Rocket | Getty Images
of new york times filed a lawsuit against Perplexity on Friday, accusing the artificial intelligence startup of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted content.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, accuses Perplexity of illegally scraping Times articles, videos, podcasts and other content to create answers to users’ questions. The startup also produces output that is “identical or substantially similar” to Times content, according to the complaint.
“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly oppose Perplexity’s unauthorized use of our content to develop and promote their products,” Graham James, a spokesperson for the paper, said in a statement. “We will continue to work to hold companies accountable who refuse to recognize the value of our work.”
Perplexity did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Founded in 2022, Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that provides easy answers to user questions. The startup is based on IVP, New Enterprise Associates, Nvidiaaccording to Pitchbook.
“Publishers have been suing emerging technology companies for 100 years, starting with radio, television, the internet, social media, and now AI. Fortunately, it’s never worked out. Otherwise we’d all be telegraphing this,” Jesse Dwyer, head of communications at Perplexity, said in a statement.
Friday’s Times lawsuit is the latest example of how media companies and publishers are working to protect intellectual property amid the AI boom.
The Times is already involved in another ongoing copyright case. microsoft OpenAI alleges that the company improperly used content from The Times to train its AI models. The lawsuit was filed in 2023 in the Southern District of New York.
In September, AI startup Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit with a group of authors who say the company illegally downloaded their books and other books from a pirate database.
The settlement is the largest publicly reported copyright recovery.
Attention: Amazon issues Perplexity cease and desist order to AI browser agent that makes purchases
