New York Times Sues Perplexity AI For Alleged Illegal Copying Of Content

The New York Times (NYT) sued Perplexity AI (photo: x @nytimes)

JAKARTA - Perplexity AI is again facing new legal problems after The New York Times (NYT) officially sued the company on Friday 5 December. The lawsuit alleges that Perplexity has copied, distributed, and featured millions of articles belonging to NYT without permission to train and operate its artificial intelligence products.

The fast-growing startup has previously drawn criticism from various publishers and has been involved in a number of legal disputes, as its efforts to expand aggressively in the highly competitive AI industry. According to a Reuters report, this lawsuit adds to pressure on companies that have faced various allegations related to copyright infringement.

NYT alleges Perplexity's AI tools not only rely on suspended and copied content, including from paid articles, but also produce false information or halusination'. Furthermore, these hallucinations are often displayed as if they are an official report of The New York Times and are even accompanied by a registered trademark belonging to the newspaper.

NYT spokesman Graham James confirmed that the company supports the ethical development of AI, but strongly rejects the unlicensed use of its journalism. He stated that Perplexity's actions hurt the publishing industry and violated legitimate intellectual property rights.

In the lawsuit, The New York Times demanded compensation, court orders, and various other forms of legal restoration to stop alleged misuse of content. The Perplexity issue is increasingly complex after the Chicago Tribune also filed a similar lawsuit the day before.

Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communications Perplexity, dismissed the allegations and said publishers often used legal tactics to suppress new technologies. Perplexity previously also stated that they did not scroll through data to build their main model, but only indexed web pages and provided factual citations.

The NYT lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and is said to have followed a cease-and-desist warning letter sent by NYT more than a year ago. This case extends the conflict between publishers and technology companies over the use of copyrighted material without authorization.

A similar conflict also surfaced last October when Reddit sued Perplexity in a New York federal court, accusing the company along with three other entities of illegally hacking data. In addition, the US$20 billion company based in San Francisco is still facing lawsuits from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Dow Jones, and the New York Post.

The New York Times itself has previously worked with Amazon to provide its content for AI products such as Alexa. But the newspaper is also in dispute with ChatGPT creator OpenAI on similar issues. Reuters reports that some AI companies routinely ignore standard web protocols designed to prevent data taking by a generative AI system.