The parent company of the Post and Wall Street Journal has filed a lawsuit against Jeff Bezos-backed artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI, accusing it of engaging in “massive illegal copying” of the publications' copyrighted material. .
News Corp. subsidiary NYP Holdings and Dow Jones filed a joint lawsuit against Perplexity AI in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, accusing the company of using its news articles as the basis for answers to questions. I asked him to stop doing that.
The plaintiffs also ask the court to order Perplexity to destroy databases that use copyrighted works.
Perplexity stores a large amount of copyrighted material in a database that users can access through an AI mechanism known as “Search Augmented Generation” (RAG) in order to provide answers to users' queries without permission or payment. is said to have accumulated.
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson accused Perplexity of “misuse of intellectual property to the detriment of journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp”.
In a statement, Thomson said: “The disconcerting perplexity involved the deliberate copying of vast amounts of copyrighted material without charge and the shameless presentation of repurposed material as direct substitutes for the original source. ”
“Perplexity proudly states that users can 'skip the link.' Apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check.”
In one example cited in the complaint, the chatbot allegedly regurgitated a writer's entire Post article about the Mets' first game at Shea Stadium, prompted by the question, “Can you provide the full text of that article?” There is.
Perplexity was founded in 2022 and touts itself as a “free, AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, reliable, real-time answers to any question.” The company aims to challenge Google by offering an AI-based search engine. is “part chatbot and part search engine.”
Earlier this year, the company reached 10 million monthly active users. The latest round of funding valued the company at about $1 billion.
journal Perplexity reported on Sunday. recently began financing negotiations and aims to raise its valuation to at least $8 billion.
One of the investors is Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world.
The Post has reached out to Perplexity for comment. In June, Perplexity was accused of plagiarizing content from CNBC and Forbes without payment or attribution.
Last week, the New York Times sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice requesting that it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes.
In a letter, a copy of which was shared with Reuters, the news publisher said the way it used Perplexity's content, including creating summaries and other types of output, violated copyright law.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have been sounding the alarm about chatbots that can scour the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for users.
Earlier this year, News Corp signed a multi-year agreement with OpenAI to share news content for both training purposes and to answer questions from users.
As part of the deal, OpenAI will have access to both fresh and archived material from News Corp's major news publications, including Australian publications such as The Journal, Barron's, The Post and The Daily Telegraph. You will be able to do it.
“We applaud principled companies like OpenAI that understand that integrity and creativity are essential to realizing the potential of artificial intelligence,” Thomson said on Monday. .
“Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property, nor is it the only AI company we pursue with vigor and rigour.”
Mr Thomson added that News Corp “would rather persuade than sue…but for the sake of journalists, writers and the company, we must challenge the politics of content theft”. Ta.
with post wire
