The newspapers The Wall Street Journal e The New York Post filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York on Monday against the artificial intelligence (AI) Perplexity AI, alleging mass copyright and trademark infringement.
Perplexity is one of Silicon Valley’s most promising startups, and its AI-based search engine is often cited as a potential rival to Google.
The lawsuit accuses Perplexity of illegally copying and reproducing copyrighted content created by Wall Street Journal e New York Postto power its AI-driven “answer engine.”
Perplexity.ai is a question-answering platform known for its minimalist and interactive interface. Unlike the ChatGPT and Claude, Perplexity’s tool offers up-to-date solutions, which often include links to the sources, which allows the user to check the information.
Unlike a classic search engine, Perplexity delivers answers directly on your page, eliminating the need to click through to the source site. According to the complaint, this constitutes misuse of protected content, which allows the company to divert readers and revenue from newspapers.
“Perplexity’s business model does not target business to content creators. On the contrary, it takes advantage of monetization opportunities”, highlights the process.
Supported by the millionaire Jeff Bezos and semiconductor giant Nvidia, Perplexity did not respond to contact made by AFP.
The company is also accused of harming publications by attributing false information to its newsrooms. The vehicles request precautionary measures and compensation of up to US$150,000 per infraction. They also demand the destruction of any database containing their copyrighted works.
In a similar case, the New York Times last year filed a complaint against the OpenAIaccusing the creator of ChatGPT of stealing content to train its powerful AI with protected material.
A News Corpowner of Wall Street Journal and the New York Postsigned a content deal with OpenAI and alleges in the lawsuit that Perplexity ignored requests for a similar partnership.
