The New York Times sues Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement

New York Times He filed an application on Friday case Perplexity is alleged to have illegally copied and distributed the AI ​​startup’s copyrighted content.

The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, accuses Perplexity of illegally scraping The Times’ stories, videos, podcasts and other content to create answers to user queries. The initiative also produces output that is “identical to or substantially similar” to The Times’ content, according to the complaint.

“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of artificial intelligence, we strongly oppose Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote its products,” Graham James, a spokesman for The Times, said in a statement. he said. “We will continue to work to hold accountable companies that refuse to recognize the value of our work.”

Another publication Chicago TribuneHe filed a similar copyright lawsuit against Perplexity on Thursday. Tribune also argues that Perplexity scraped and distributed its content without permission.

Founded in 2022, Perplexity is known for its artificial intelligence-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions. The startup has raised more than $1.5 billion in funding from investors including IVP, New Enterprise Associates and. NvidiaAccording to PitchBook.

“Broadcasters have been suing technology startups for a century, including radio, TV, the internet, social media and now artificial intelligence. Fortunately, that never worked, or we’d all be talking about it over the wire,” Jesse Dwyer, head of communications at Perplexity, said in a statement. he said.

The lawsuit filed by The Times on Friday is the latest example of how media companies and publishers are working to protect their intellectual property during the artificial intelligence boom.

The Times is currently embroiled in another ongoing copyright lawsuit against it. Microsoft and OpenAI, which claims companies improperly used The Times’ content to train artificial intelligence models. This lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York in 2023.

In September, artificial intelligence startup Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit with a group of authors who claimed the company illegally downloaded their books and others from pirate databases.

This agreement constitutes the largest publicly disclosed copyright recovery.

WRISTWATCH: Amazon sends cease and desist to Perplexity over shopper AI browser agents