New York Times Perplexity
On December 6, 2024, The New York Times sued Perplexity AI for copyright infringement. The charge: stealing articles, videos, podcasts, and repackaging them as AI-generated answers.
The Allegations
The Times claims Perplexity:
Scraped content without permission
Generates "verbatim or near-verbatim" copies
Bypassed technical barriers (robots.txt)
Fabricated information and falsely attributed it to the Times
Directly competes with and substitutes for NYT content
The Business Model: "Skip the links" means skip the publishers entirely.
The 18-Month Battle
Multiple cease-and-desist letters sent (July 2024, October 2024)
18+ months of negotiations without a licensing deal
Perplexity continued using content throughout
Perplexity's Defense
Head of Communications:
"Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it's never worked."
Company Position:
"Indexing web pages and surfacing factual content"
"No one organization owns the copyright over facts"
Offers Publishers' Program with revenue-sharing deals
The Broader Attack
Perplexity faces multiple lawsuits:
| Plaintiff | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dow Jones (WSJ) | Oct 2024 | Active |
| Chicago Tribune | Dec 2024 | Active |
| Oct 2024 | Active | |
| New York Times | Dec 2024 | Active |
Amazon also threatened legal action over Perplexity's shopping agent.
What This Means
This case tests:
Whether AI must pay for content it summarizes
How copyright applies to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
The future economic model for journalism
If Publishers Win: AI companies must license content.
If AI Wins: Publishers lose a major revenue stream.
The Stark Reality
Perplexity has raised $1.5 billion in total funding, according to PitchBook data reported by TechCrunch. They can afford licensing fees. They choose not to pay.