Dow Jones, the parent company to the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post filed a lawsuit Monday against artificial intelligence company Perplexity, alleging that the company is illegally using copyrighted work.
The suit alleges that Perplexity, which is an AI research and conversational search engine, draws on articles and other copyrighted content from the publishers to feed into its product and then repackages the content in its responses, or sometimes uses the content verbatim, without linking back to the articles. The engine can also be used to display several paragraphs or entire articles, when asked.
In some cases, the suit alleges, the engine also adds made-up text that was not part of the original article.
“Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp. The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can “skip the links” – apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check,” Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, said in a statement.
In his statement Thomson noted that the company had made a licensing agreement with AI platform OpenAI – as have many other publishers – and that he would rather “woo than sue.”
The suit claims that in 2024 Dow Jones and The New York Post had sent a letter to Perplexity to raise these concerns and also discuss a possible licensing deal, but that letter was not answered.
“We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realise the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy,” the statement continued.
The plaintiffs are asking that Perplexity be enjoined from copying work without the publishers’ authorization and be made to destroy any index or database that uses that work as well as any copies of the work. The suit also seeks $150,000 for each infringement, damages and Perplexity’s profits for each infringement.
Perplexity, founded in 2022, is currently seeking to raise an additional $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, per reporting from News Corp’s own Wall Street Journal.