Rupert Murdoch’s News Agencies Sue Perplexity AI Over Alleged Involvement in ‘Massive Freeriding’

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CNN
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Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post sued Perplexity on Monday, accusing the generative AI company of illegally cutting its coverage and redirecting traffic to its own platforms.

The News Corp-owned companies accused Perplexity of training its so-called answer engine on copyrighted material, using human-generated news content to generate answers to users’ questions, allowing them to bypass publishers’ websites.

“What Perplexity fails to disclose is that its core business model is to massively engage in Plaintiffs’ proprietary content in order to compete with Plaintiffs for engagement with the same news-consuming audience and, in turn, deprive Plaintiffs of important sources of revenue,” it says Notice Complaint Alleged.

In a statement, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson said the AI ​​company “is committing an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp.” harm.”

“The astounding Perplexity has intentionally copied large amounts of copyrighted material without compensation and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct replacement for the original source,” Thomson said. “Perplexity proudly states that users can ‘skip the links’ – apparently Perplexity wants to skip the check.”

A Perplexity spokesperson did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Given the rapid development of AI tools, news publishers have argued that cutting out their reporting without permission or compensation to train chatbot models poses an existential threat to their businesses. While some publishers have opted to license their content to generative AI companies for small fees, others have peppered the companies with lawsuits in the hopes of getting a bigger paycheck for their work and preventing future intellectual property theft.

Earlier this year, News Corp signed a major deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, licensing its news content in a deal valued at more than $250 million.

In his statement Monday, Thomson said OpenAI differs from Perplexity by being “principled” and said the Sam Altman-led company “understands that integrity and creativity are essential as we realize the potential of artificial intelligence.” want.”

“Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property, and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue vigorously and consistently,” Thomson wrote. “We have made it clear that we would rather court than sue, but for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy.”

The lawsuit comes less than a week after The New York Times sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter asking the startup to stop using the newspaper’s content.

“Perplexity and its business partners have been unjustly enriched by the unauthorized use of the Times’ expressive, carefully written, researched and edited journalism without a license,” the newspaper said in a statement.

The Times also sued OpenAI last year for copyright infringement, accusing the company of using its reporting without permission to train its chatbots and seeking billions of dollars in damages.