American publishing firm Dow Jones, the parent company of media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, is suing the AI search engine Perplexity for copyright infringement. In a lawsuit filed on Monday, News Corp-owned companies allege that Perplexity engages in "a massive amount of illegal copying" of its copyrighted content, according to a Reuters report.
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Perplexity AI
Perplexity is an AI startup that trains its AI search models using content from across the web, allowing it to respond to user queries with summaries of its sources. Perplexity employs a variety of large language models (LLMs), including those from OpenAI and Meta's open-source model Llama, to generate these summaries. Although Perplexity provides citations in its results, its marketing promotes the idea that its interface enables users to "skip the links."
Publishers Demand Immediate Action
"This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously free riding on the valuable content the publishers produce," according to the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones and the NY Post, the report said.
The news organisations reportedly allege that Perplexity's AI-generated "answer machine” has ingested their copyrighted news stories, analysis, and opinion pieces into an internal database used to generate responses to users' questions.
In its quest to provide answers, Perplexity copied "vast" quantities of the publishers' work into a database, which uses an AI technique known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide answers to users' queries, the suit alleges, the report said.
"Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers, and News Corp," said News Corp CEO Robert Thomson in a statement, according to the report.
In July, Dow Jones and the New York Post sent a letter to Perplexity, notifying the company of legal concerns over the unauthorised use of copyrighted material and proposing a discussion about a potential licensing agreement. However, the company did not respond, according to the lawsuit, the report added.
The news organisations are reportedly asking the court to prohibit Perplexity from using their articles to generate answers and to order the destruction of any database containing their copyrighted content.
Earlier this month, on October 16, The New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice, demanding that it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes.
Earlier, in May, News Corp announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI, with Thomson applauding the tech company for understanding "that integrity and creativity are essential" to realise the potential of artificial intelligence, the report said.
Also Read: OpenAI’s Content Partnerships with Media So Far in 2024
Wayra's Investment in Perplexity
Recently, Wayra, the corporate venture capital arm of Spain-based telecommunications company Telefonica, announced that it had invested an undisclosed sum in Perplexity. According to reports, Perplexity AI is currently seeking to raise around USD 500 million at a valuation of approximately USD 9 billion.
