In a new development in the growing tension between conventional media organizations and artificial intelligence companies, The New York Times filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the generative AI startup Perplexity.
The complaint accuses the company of illegally crawling and reusing Times’ content without permission. Perplexity has been taking original Times journalism and reworking it into “verbatim or near-verbatim” responses to user queries, effectively reproducing the publisher’s proprietary work without permission, according to the complaint filed in New York federal court.
The Times isn’t concerned with text only. The lawsuit extends into the realm of allegations of unauthorized use of videos, podcasts, and images by Perplexity. Most disturbing for the publication is the assertion by the suit that Perplexity has made up information and attributed it to the Times, calling into serious question the accuracy and credibility of AI-generated content.
The New York Times Sues Perplexity Over AI Summaries, Alleging Copyright Infringement
One of those features under scrutiny is Perplexity’s Comet AI assistant, able to browse the internet to do tasks for users. The Times claimed this tool could create detailed summaries of its articles, perhaps making it unnecessary for readers to go to the original source.
“Perplexity has violated the protections that intellectual property law provides for The Times’s expressive, original journalism,” the newspaper said in its filing. The publisher is seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief, including the complete removal of Times content from Perplexity’s products.
The Times is not alone in its legal challenge. The Chicago Tribune filed a copyright infringement suit against Perplexity on the same day, suggesting a broader pattern of concern among publishers.
Perplexity has dismissed these legal claims as part of a historical pattern. Spokesperson Jesse Dwyer offered a defiant response, saying publishers have been suing new tech companies for a century, starting with radio and television, then the internet and social media, and now AI. “Fortunately, it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph,” he quipped.
Relations between the Times and Perplexity began deteriorating more than a year ago. For the first time, the newspaper issued a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity in October 2024 to stop accessing and using its content. When that didn’t work, another followed in July this year. Despite those warnings, the lawsuit says, Perplexity continued accessing Times content.
Litigation and Licensing as Publishers Clash with Perplexity and Other AI Companies
Perplexity Chief Executive Officer Aravind Srinivas, in response to last year’s cease-and-desist, said he was open to collaboration. “We are very much interested in working with every single publisher,” he said at the time. “We have no interest in being anyone’s antagonist here.”
Actions speak louder than words, however, and the present litigation suggests those discussions never materialized into an agreement.
The Times lawsuit is part of a broader legal battle between Perplexity and other publishers. The Wall Street Journal publisher, Dow Jones, and the New York Post are also suing Perplexity for copyright infringement. A judge recently rejected Perplexity’s attempt to dismiss the 2024 Dow Jones lawsuit, allowing that case to go forward.
The situation illuminates a complex and shifting landscape in the relationship between traditional media and AI companies. Publishers have taken a remarkably mixed approach, choosing partnership, others litigation. News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, perhaps best embodies this mixed strategy, with a lawsuit against Perplexity through Dow Jones coexisting with a separate content licensing deal with OpenAI.
The Legal Battles Shaping the Future of Information Discovery
A split approach reflects the difficult position publishers find themselves on one hand, needing to protect their intellectual property and ensuring they’re compensated for content that took serious resources to produce; on the other hand, recognizing this is just the future of information discovery, at least partially, and not wanting to be left behind.
These legal fights, as they unfold, are likely to shape how, and where, AI companies can and cannot use copyrighted material. The result could set important precedents for an industry still working out its relationship with existing intellectual property law.
The outcome could determine whether AI firms need to negotiate licensing deals with publishers, or whether they can continue using content more freely under existing legal frameworks.
For the time being, the courts will have to determine whether Perplexity’s use of Times content is illegal or a permissible innovation in information technology.
