News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, has filed a lawsuit against the AI search engine Perplexity for allegedly infringing on copyrighted content. Perplexity has shot back at the allegations
News Corp’s lawsuit says Perplexity – frequently mentioned as a potential challenger to Google – copies news articles, analyses, and opinions on a “massive scale,” undermining the financial stability of traditional news organizations.
According to the lawsuit, Perplexity positions itself as a platform that enables users to “skip the links” to online articles, a practice that News Corp claims diverts customers and critical revenue from copyright holders.
Perplexity says it is disappointed and surprised. “There are around three dozen lawsuits by media companies against generative AI tools. The common theme betrayed by those complaints collectively is that they wish this technology didn’t exist. They prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations, and no one can do anything with those publicly reported facts without paying a toll.”
“The lawsuit reflects an adversarial posture between media and tech that is—while depressingly familiar—fundamentally shortsighted, unnecessary, and self-defeating. We should all be working together to offer people amazing new tools and build genuinely pie-expanding businesses. There are countless things we would love to do beyond what the default application of law allows, which entail mutually beneficial commercial relationships with counterparties like the companies here who chose to sue rather than cooperate. Perplexity is proud to have launched a first-of-its-kind revenue-sharing program with leading publishers like TIME, Fortune, and Der Spiegel, which have already signed on. And our door is always open if and when the Post and the Journal decide to work with us in good faith, just as numerous others already have,” said in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges Perplexity reproduces some content verbatim and can inaccurately attribute facts and analyses to News Corp’s outlets.
Unlike ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity offers real-time answers that often feature links to source materials, enabling users to verify the information easily. Additionally, unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity displays ready-made answers directly on its webpage, eliminating the need for users to click through to external links.
News Corp claims it reached out to Perplexity in July regarding the unauthorized use of its content, but says the company failed to respond.
Perplexity says AI-enhanced search engines are not going away. “Perplexity is not going away. We look forward to a time in the future when we can focus all of our energy and attention on offering innovative tools to customers, in collaboration with media companies.
