On 5 December, The New York Times announced it had filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI for copying Times journalism to deliver it to Perplexity’s customers without permission or compensation.
The New York Times says it has repeatedly asked Perplexity to end its unauthorized use of its content, but Perplexity continues to unlawfully use The Times’s copyrighted material.
Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, added: “As our complaint states, Perplexity uses our content to power its product through a process called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). RAG allows Perplexity to crawl the internet and steal content from behind our paywall and deliver it to its customers in real time. That content should only be accessible to our paying subscribers.
“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products. We will continue to work to hold companies accountable that refuse to recognize the value of our work.”
A copy of the filing can be accessed here.
Keep up-to-date with publishing news: sign up here for InPubWeekly, our free weekly e-newsletter.
