The New York Instances and Chicago Tribune sue Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement

The New York Instances and the Chicago Tribune have filed separate lawsuits in opposition to Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement. The Instances said it had despatched Perplexity a number of cease-and-desist calls for to stop using its content till the 2 reached an settlement, however the AI firm continued in doing so.

Within the lawsuit [PDF], the Instances accused Perplexity of infringing on its copyrights at two essential levels. First, by scraping its web site (together with in actual time) to coach AI fashions and feed content material into the likes of the Claude chatbot and Comet browser. Second, within the output of Perplexity’s merchandise, with the Instances accusing the corporate’s generative AI merchandise of usually reproducing its articles verbatim. The Instances additionally says Perplexity broken its model by falsely attributing fully fabricated data (aka hallucinations) to the newspaper.

The Chicago Tribune additionally filed a lawsuit in opposition to Perplexity for comparable causes. “Perplexity’s genAI merchandise generate outputs which might be equivalent or considerably much like the Chicago Tribune’s content material,” the newspaper claimed in its swimsuit. “Upon data and perception, Perplexity has unlawfully copied tens of millions of copyrighted Chicago Tribune tales, movies, photographs and different works to energy its merchandise and instruments.”

These lawsuits are the most recent in dozens of legal cases involving copyright holders and AI corporations within the US. The Instances, for example, beforehand sued OpenAI and Microsoft. It accused the businesses of coaching their giant language fashions on tens of millions of its articles with out permission. That case is ongoing.

Copyright holders have licensed their content material to AI corporations in some instances, although. OpenAI has struck a number of offers with media corporations. The Instances and Amazon reached an agreement this yr that is mentioned to be price as a lot as $25 million per year to the media firm.