The New York Times has launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI search firm Perplexity in a New York federal court, its second such action against an AI company.
Filed days after a similar claim by the Chicago Tribune, it accuses Perplexity of scraping and repurposing the newspaper’s articles, videos, and podcasts via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in its chatbots and Comet browser, producing verbatim copies or summaries that divert subscribers and harm revenues.
“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products,” Times spokesperson Graham James stated.
“RAG allows Perplexity to crawl the internet and steal content from behind our paywall and deliver it to its customers in real time. That content should only be accessible to our paying subscribers,” he added.
The suit also claims fabricated attributions damage the outlet’s reputation and demands damages plus an injunction.
Perplexity counters with its Publishers’ Program sharing ad revenue with Gannett, TIME, Fortune, and others, plus Comet Plus allocating 80% of its £3.95 monthly fee to partners and a Getty Images licensing deal.
“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, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph,” Communications head Jesse Dwyer responded. This follows a Times cease-and-desist over a year ago after failed negotiations.
The case parallels ongoing suits against OpenAI/Microsoft and a $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement on pirated training data, with Perplexity also targeted by News Corp, Britannica, Nikkei, Reddit, and others amid scraping accusations.
Yet The Times partners with Amazon and notes OpenAI deals with Associated Press and Vox Media, using litigation to secure fair pay in the AI age.