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

The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed separate lawsuits against Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement. The Times said it had sent Perplexity several cease-and-desist demands to stop using its content until the two reached an agreement, but the AI company persisted in doing so.

In the lawsuit [PDF], the Times accused Perplexity of infringing on its copyrights at two main stages. First, by scraping its website (including in real time) to train AI models and feed content into the likes of the Claude chatbot and Comet browser. Second, in the output of Perplexity's products, with the Times accusing the company’s generative AI products of often reproducing its articles verbatim. The Times also says Perplexity damaged its brand by falsely attributing completely fabricated information (aka hallucinations) to the newspaper.

The Chicago Tribune also filed a ...