NYT sues Perplexity AI for allegedly using its journalism without permission

The New York Times has taken legal action against Perplexity AI, accusing the fast-rising artificial intelligence startup of lifting and displaying millions of Times articles — including content behind its paywall to fuel its generative AI tools.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday, places Perplexity at the center of a growing wave of copyright disputes involving publishers and AI companies racing for dominance in the booming market for content-trained models.

According to the complaint, Perplexity not only scraped Times reporting but also produced AI-generated outputs containing fabricated information, or so-called “hallucinations,” which it then appeared to attribute to the newspaper by displaying the Times’ trademarks alongside the results.

The Times argued that Perplexity’s commercial model is built on unlicensed reproduction of journalism and said its newsroom’s work is being used without authorization to build and promote the startup’s products.

“We believe in responsible and ethical development of AI. But Perplexity’s unauthorized use of our content crosses the line,” said NYT spokesperson Graham James.

The media company is seeking damages and a court order stopping what it calls misuse of its intellectual property.

The complaint lands just a day after the Chicago Tribune also filed suit against Perplexity, underscoring the widening tension between AI developers and the news industry over data rights.

Perplexity rejected the claims, with head of communications Jesse Dwyer calling the lawsuits a misguided attempt by traditional publishers to slow innovation. The firm has previously maintained that it indexes publicly available webpages and provides citations rather than scraping data to train foundational models.