Oct 22, 2024 13:22:00

The Wall Street Journal's parent company sues AI search service Perplexity for copyright infringement, Perplexity ignores proposed licensing deal

News Corp , the parent company of major newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, has filed a copyright lawsuit against the AI search service Perplexity .

Wall Street Journal, New York Post Sue AI Startup Perplexity, Alleging 'Massive Freeriding' - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/wall-street-journal-new-york-post-sue-perplexity-ai-c5d9554d

News Corp's Dow Jones, NY Post Lawsuit Against AI Startup Perplexity
https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/news-corp-dow-jones-ny-post-sue-perplexity-copyright-infringement-1236184900/

Perplexity is an AI-based search service that generates answers to search terms based on information from news articles and blog articles on the Internet. For example, in the following example, the search term 'How do I install an SSD on a Raspberry Pi 5 and boot the OS from the SSD?' is answered based on multiple information sources, including articles from GIGAZINE.

Perplexity has faced

copyright issues due to its ability to 'generate answers based on content on the Internet.' Perplexity has been working on measures such as proposing an advertising revenue sharing program to avoid legal issues, but in October 2024, it was reported that the major daily newspaper The New York Times had notified it to stop using its content.

The New York Times demands that AI startup Perplexity halt access to and use of its content - GIGAZINE

Then, on October 21, 2024, it was revealed that News Corp, the parent company of media such as 'The Wall Street Journal', 'Dow Jones', and 'New York Post', sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. According to the lawsuit, News Corp sent Perplexity a 'letter proposing to cease unauthorized use of copyrighted content and enter into a formal license agreement' in July 2024. However, it seems that no response was received from Perplexity.

The complaint also lists examples of Perplexity’s unauthorized use of News Corp content, including by outputting “full-length articles from the New York Post” as responses.

It also sometimes displayed summaries of paid articles from the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, following the content of the New York Post article, it seems that misinformation generated by AI hallucinations (hallucinations) was sometimes displayed.

News Corp has signed a multi-year content usage agreement with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

OpenAI announces multi-year deal with Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp - GIGAZINE

Separate from the lawsuit, Perplexity is reported to have launched a $500 million (approximately 75 billion yen) funding round in October 2024, and is expected to be valued at $8 billion (approximately 1.2 trillion yen) after the completion of the fundraising. In addition, Perplexity's annual revenue until March 2024 was approximately $10 million (approximately 1.5 billion yen), but based on its most recent revenue, it is estimated that it will earn approximately $50 million (approximately 7.5 billion yen) in revenue over the next 12 months.