CNN sues Perplexity AI over alleged copyright infringement

The news network CNN has filed a lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company Perplexity, alleging the firm unlawfully copied and distributed its copyrighted content without permission. The complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, marks CNN's first legal action against an AI company and is believed to be the first such litigation by a television network.

The lawsuit accuses Perplexity of scraping more than 17,000 CNN stories, photos, and videos to train its AI products. According to the filing, CNN attempted to negotiate a content licensing deal with Perplexity last year, but the parties could not agree on terms. The network subsequently blocked Perplexity's web-crawling bot from accessing its content. The lawsuit states that, as a result of these failed negotiations, Perplexity knew it was not permitted to use CNN's content or trademarks.

In a statement, a CNN spokesperson said the lawsuit stands for the principle that a company valued at tens of billions of dollars should not be able to take content from the entities that create it. The spokesperson emphasized that high-quality journalism is expensive to produce and...