Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones and the New York Post have sued Perplexity AI, accusing the artificial intelligence startup of copying large amounts of their copyrighted content without permission.
The lawsuit, filed in New York, claims Perplexity uses material from the Wall Street Journal and other publications to generate summaries, allowing users to bypass the original sources, which harms the publishers’ revenue from advertising and subscriptions.
Perplexity, which competes with Google in the AI search market, employs language models from OpenAI and Meta to provide responses to user queries. The publishers argue that, unlike search engines, Perplexity substitutes their work rather than directing traffic to it.
This lawsuit, filed by parent company News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA), follows similar actions by media outlets against AI companies using their content without authorisation.
Earlier, the New York Times sent a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity, and Forbes and Wired have also raised plagiarism concerns. News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) recently partnered with OpenAI in a deal praised for respecting content creators' rights.
Over the weekend, the AI search upstart unveiled plans to raise $500 million on a valuation of $9 billion - three times its worth at the start of the year.