New York Times Escalates Battle Against Perplexity With New Lawsuit

The New York Times is suing generative-AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, expanding its ineligible combat against artificial-intelligence companies that it says bargain and past nett disconnected its content.

In its lawsuit, the Times accused Perplexity of illegally crawling its worldly and repackaging archetypal Times stories successful “verbatim oregon near-verbatim” written responses to users. It besides accused the institution of copyright infringement for its videos, podcasts and images, and of fabricating accusation and falsely attributing it to the Times.

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The Times besides said Perplexity’s Comet AI assistant, which tin browse the web and implicit tasks for users, produced elaborate summaries of Times articles.

“Perplexity has violated the protections that intelligence spot instrumentality provides for The Times’s expressive, archetypal journalism,” the Times said successful its suit, which was filed successful a New York national court.

The steadfast is seeking damages and injunctive relief, including removal of Times contented from Perplexity’s products.

The Chicago Tribune besides filed a suit against Perplexity for copyright infringement, connected Thursday.

Perplexity didn’t instantly respond to a petition for remark astir either suit.

Relations betwixt the New York Times and Perplexity person been strained for much than a year. The Times issued a “cease and desist” announcement to Perplexity successful October 2024, demanding that it halt accessing and utilizing the media outlet’s content, The Wall Street Journal reported astatine the time. The Times sent different announcement this past July, but Perplexity has continued to entree and usage its content, according to the suit.

“We are precise overmuch funny successful moving with each azygous publisher,” Perplexity Chief Executive Aravind Srinivas said successful effect to past year’s cease-and-desist notice. “We person nary involvement successful being anyone’s antagonist here.”

Publishers person taken a mixed attack to AI companies, forging concern and content-licensing deals with some, portion besides pursuing litigation against others successful an effort to person fiscal compensation for the usage of their content.

Wall Street Journal steadfast Dow Jones and the New York Post are suing Perplexity for copyright infringement. A justice precocious rejected Perplexity’s question to disregard the 2024 lawsuit, and the lawsuit is continuing.