Publishers are officially done playing nice with AI

The New York Times has filed a new lawsuit against AI search startup Perplexity, accusing the company of using its journalism without permission.

Other outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, have recently made similar claims.

The Times says Perplexity’s tools pull information from news sites, sometimes from behind paywalls, and turn it into answers for users through its RAG-based chatbots and Comet browser assistant.

It also claims some responses copy its articles too closely or attribute inaccurate information to the outlet.

This legal action sits within a wider industry push.

Many publishers are negotiating licensing deals with AI companies, but lawsuits have become a way to pressure firms into paying for news content.

Perplexity has introduced revenue-sharing programmes and signed a licensing deal with Getty Images, but the Times argues its content is still being used without agreement.

Perplexity says publishers have challenged new technologies for decades, but the case adds to growing scrutiny.

News Corp, Britannica, Nikkei, Reddit, Wired and Forbes have all criticised the company’s data practices, and Cloudflare recently confirmed that Perplexity scraped sites that had blocked it.

The Times is also suing OpenAI and Microsoft over how its articles were used for AI training.

Courts are still defining what “fair use” means in these cases, though a recent settlement in a similar lawsuit against Anthropic suggests that licensed and unlicensed data may be treated very differently.

The Times wants damages and a court order stopping Perplexity from using its work.

At the same time, it continues to sign paid licensing deals with other AI firms, reflecting how publishers are trying to find sustainable ways to work with AI.

AI companies beefing with newspapers feels like Season 4 of a show nobody wrote. - MG