News Corp Sues AI Startup Perplexity Over Mass Copyright Infringement of WSJ, NY Post Content
The owners of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI company Perplexity in New York federal court. The case could set an important precedent for similar lawsuits against AI companies in the music industry.
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Key allegations in the lawsuit:
- Perplexity allegedly copied hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles without permission for its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) database
- The company is accused of making verbatim reproductions of paywalled content and full articles
- Additional unauthorized copies are allegedly stored in a separate database for analytics
- The platform is accused of generating false content ("hallucinations") and incorrectly attributing it to the publications' authors
The plaintiffs attempted to discuss licensing options with Perplexity in July 2024 but received no response. This lawsuit comes after the publications' parent company successfully negotiated a licensing agreement with OpenAI.
The lawsuit seeks:
- Substantial damages
- An order to stop unauthorized copying
- Destruction of databases containing copyrighted material
Perplexity, valued at potentially $8 billion and backed by Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, positions itself as "today's most powerful answer engine." The outcome of this case could significantly impact how AI companies handle copyrighted content in their products.
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