News Corp’s Dow Jones, NY Post Lawsuit Against AI Startup Perplexity

News Corp’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that describes itself as an “AI-powered Swiss Army knife of information discovery and curiosity,” for copyright infringement.

“Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users with accurate and timely news and information on a platform that allows users, in Perplexity’s own words, to ‘skip links’ to original publishers’ websites,” said the company said in the federal lawsuit filed Monday. “Perplexity seeks to achieve this by illegally copying publishers’ copyrighted works on a large scale, diverting customers and vital revenue from these copyright holders. This lawsuit is brought by news publishers seeking redress for Perplexity’s brazen plan to compete for readers while exploiting the valuable content the publishers produce.”

The lawsuit alleges that in July 2024, Dow Jones and the Postal Service sent a letter to Perplexity “in which they alerted Perplexity to the legal issues raised by Perplexity’s unauthorized use of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works and offered to do so.” “To discuss a possible licensing agreement.” Perplexity didn’t bother to answer.”

Representatives for Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, The New York Times sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist notice last week, asking the company to stop using its content and claiming that the Perplexity AI system violated its copyrights, Reuters reported. The Times has also sued OpenAI and Microsoft, making similar allegations of copyright infringement.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, Perplexity plans to raise a new round of funding of about $500 million, more than doubling its valuation to about $8 billion. Perplexity’s existing investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2. and chipmaker Nvidia, whose fortunes are booming due to strong demand for AI applications.

Dow Jones and the New York Post filed the lawsuit on October 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A copy of the lawsuit is available at this link.

The lawsuit seeks to recover Perplexity from “unlawfully copying Plaintiffs’ copyrighted content without Plaintiffs’ permission” as well as statutory damages for copyright infringement “up to $150,000 for each infringement, actual damages and profits of Perplexity for each infringement, including any unauthorized infringement, “prohibit digital copies or other content derived from the copyrighted works of Dow Jones and NYP Holdings,” the lawsuit says.

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement about the lawsuit: “Perplexity is committing an intellectual property abuse that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp. Perplexity has intentionally and without compensation and shamelessly copied large amounts of copyrighted material.” presents reused material as a direct replacement for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can “skip the links” – apparently Perplexity wants to skip the check.”

Earlier this year, News Corp entered into an agreement with OpenAI under which the AI ​​company will pay News Corp royalties potentially worth more than $250 million over five years.

“We applaud principled companies like OpenAI that understand that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of artificial intelligence,” said Thomson. “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. 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.”