Wall Street Journal and New York Post Sue Perplexity AI for Copyright Infringement

News Corp., the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, has filed a lawsuit against AI-powered search startup Perplexity, accusing the company of copyright infringement for using their content to train its large language models.

Engadget reports that two major news publications, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, have taken legal action against Perplexity, an AI-powered search startup, for allegedly using their content without permission to train its large language models. The lawsuit, filed by the publications’ parent company, News Corp., accuses Perplexity of copyright infringement and seeks to prevent the AI company from using their articles to generate answers to user queries.

According to the complaint, Perplexity’s actions are diverting traffic away from the publications’ websites, effectively “freeriding” on the content produced by the news organizations. The plaintiffs argue that Perplexity’s AI-powered service can provide users with not just snippets of copyrighted articles, but entire pieces, especially for those subscribed to its premium plan. They cite an instance where the service allegedly provided the full text of a New York Post article when prompted by a user.

Furthermore, the publications claim that Perplexity’s AI has the potential to harm their brand by citing information that never appeared on their websites. The AI’s ability to “hallucinate” and add incorrect details to its responses is a major concern. In one example, the AI allegedly attributed quotes to a Wall Street Journal article about the US arming Ukraine-bound F-16 jets, despite those quotes never appearing in the original piece.

The lawsuit states that the publications had previously sent a letter to Perplexity in July to address these legal issues, but the AI startup failed to respond. This is not the first time news organizations have taken legal action against AI companies for copyright infringement. The New York Times, along with The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet, have previously sued OpenAI for using their content to train its large language models. Similarly, Condé Nast had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity, demanding that it stop using its publications’ articles as responses to user queries.

News Corp. is seeking a court order to prohibit Perplexity from using its publications’ content without permission and is also demanding damages of up to $150,000 for each incident of copyright infringement. It remains to be seen whether Perplexity will be willing to negotiate a content agreement with the news organizations, similar to the licensing deal struck between News Corp. and OpenAI earlier this year, which allows the ChatGPT owner to use News Corp.’s website articles for training over the next five years in exchange for a reported $250 million.