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

The New York Occasions and the Chicago Tribune have filed separate lawsuits in opposition to Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement. The Occasions 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 persevered in doing so.

Within the lawsuit [PDF], the Occasions accused Perplexity of infringing on its copyrights at two primary phases. 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 Occasions accusing the corporate’s generative AI merchandise of typically reproducing its articles verbatim. The Occasions 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 can be an identical or considerably just like the Chicago Tribune’s content material,” the newspaper claimed in its go well with. “Upon data and perception, Perplexity has unlawfully copied tens of millions of copyrighted Chicago Tribune tales, movies, photos 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 firms within the US. The Occasions, as an example, beforehand sued OpenAI and Microsoft. It accused the businesses of coaching their massive 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 firms in some circumstances, although. OpenAI has struck a number of offers with media firms. The Occasions 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.