News Corp sues AI firm Perplexity over copyright violations

News Corp, the media giant behind outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, has filed a lawsuit against the AI search engine Perplexity, accusing the company of infringing on its copyrighted content. According to the lawsuit, Perplexity allegedly copies and summarises large quantities of News Corp’s articles, analyses, and opinions without permission, potentially diverting revenue from the original publishers. The AI startup, which positions itself as a tool to help users ‘skip the links’ to full articles, is claimed to have harmed the financial interests of news outlets by discouraging users from visiting the sources.

The lawsuit goes beyond accusations of content scraping, stating that Perplexity has sometimes reproduced material verbatim and falsely attributed facts or even invented news stories under News Corp’s name. News Corp claims it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity in July but received no response, prompting the legal action. Perplexity has also faced similar accusations from other major publications like Wired, Forbes, and The New York Times, with concerns over scraping content, bypassing paywalls, and plagiarism.

In the lawsuit, News Corp asks the court to order Perplexity to stop using its content without authorisation and destroy any databases containing its works. CEO Robert Thomson condemned Perplexity’s practices as abusing intellectual property that harms journalists and content creators. Thomson did, however, commend other companies like OpenAI, which have made deals with News Corp and other outlets to use their content for AI training legally.

Perplexity has yet to comment on the lawsuit, though it has started paying some publishers, including Time and Fortune, for the use of their content. As the legal battle unfolds, the case highlights growing tensions between traditional media companies and AI platforms over the use of copyrighted material.