News Corp’s Dow Jones, NY Post Lawsuit Against AI Startup Perplexity

News Corp‘s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that calls itself an “AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity,” alleging copyright infringement.

“Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity’s own words, allows users to ‘Skip the Links’ to original publishers’ websites,” the companies said in the lawsuit. “Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders. This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce.”

The lawsuit alleges that in July 2024, Dow Jones and the Post sent a letter to Perplexity “putting it on notice of the legal issues raised by Perplexity’s unauthorized use of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works and offering to discuss a potential licensing deal. Perplexity did not bother to respond.”

Reps for Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dow Jones and the New York Post filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A copy of the lawsuit is available at this link.

The lawsuit seeks to enjoin Perplexity from “the unlawful copying of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted content without Plaintiffs’ authorization” and statutory copyright infringement damages, “up to and including $150,000 for each infringement, actual damages, and Perplexity’s profits, for each infringement including each unauthorized,” per the lawsuit.

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, in a statement about the lawsuit, said: “Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp. The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that users can ‘skip the links’ – apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check.

Thomson added, “We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realise the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy.”