The New York Times Demands Perplexity Cease Use of Its Content

New York Times Takes Legal Action Against AI Firm Perplexity for Copyright Violation

The New York Times is intensifying its legal efforts against AI startups, specifically targeting Perplexity, an AI firm backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. A report from The Wall Street Journal reveals that the Times has issued a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, accusing the company of unlawfully using its content to generate answers and summaries through its AI portal.

The letter emphasizes that Perplexity's actions breach copyright law, stating that the startup and its investors "have been unjustly enriched by using, without authorization, The Times’ expressive, carefully written, researched, and edited journalism." Perplexity has been given until October 30 to respond to the letter before legal action is taken.

Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, responded to the Journal, asserting that they are not disregarding the notice. He expressed a strong interest in collaborating with all publishers, including The New York Times.

This conflict is not the first instance of legal scrutiny faced by AI companies regarding content usage. The New York Times previously filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that both entities utilized over 66 million records from its archives to train their AI models, representing nearly a century's worth of copyrighted material.

Additionally, Amazon Web Services has launched an investigation into Perplexity. Wired has reported that a machine operated by Perplexity on Amazon's platform accessed numerous Condé Nast publications multiple times, apparently to collect content for its AI responses and data sets.