Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones, New York Post sue Perplexity AI over copyright infringement

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, media mogul Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and the New York Post accused artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI of engaging in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted content, according to reports.

According to the lawsuit filed in the Southern district of New York, Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones and the New York Post claim Perplexity's AI-driven platform is "freeriding on the valuable content publishers product," positioning it as a competitor that unfairly leverages their journalism to attract readers.

Perplexity AI, which is emerging as a challenger to Google's dominance in the search engine market, uses large language models (LLMs). Tools like OpenAI's GPT and Meta's Llama are used to generate information summaries by pulling from what it deems to be authoritative web sources.

The company promotes its AI tool as allowing users to "skip the links," presenting information directly rather than referring users back to the original content, a practice that news organizations argue circumvents the discovery of their work and leads to a loss in revenue.

The publishers assert that Perplexity AI's engine has copied vast amounts of news stories, analysis, and opinion pieces into its internal database. The tool then uses an AI technique known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to answer users' questions, which, at times, reproduces their work verbatim, according to the lawsuit.

The case underscores broader concerns among news publishers about the impact of AI tools on journalism. CEO Robert Thompson stated in a report that Perplexity penetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers, and News Corp.

The lawsuit also alleges that despite a letter from Dow Jones and the New York Post in July outlining potential legal violations and offering a licensing deal, Perplexity failed to respond.

The plaintiffs are now seeking a court order to halt Perplexity’s use of their content and destroy any databases containing their copyrighted material.

Just earlier this month, the New York Times issued a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity for the same reason, and other media outlets, including Forbes and Wired, have raised similar complaints.

Read more: The New York Times sends 'cease-and-desist' notice to AI startup Perplexity