NYT, Chicago Tribune Sue Perplexity AI for Copyright

The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed separate federal lawsuits against Perplexity AI, accusing the artificial intelligence startup of copyright infringement through the unauthorized use of their journalistic content to power its chatbot and search engine products. The suits, lodged in a New York federal court on Thursday and Friday respectively, represent the latest escalation in disputes between news publishers and AI companies over the scraping and reproduction of protected material.

The New York Times complaint alleges that Perplexity copied, distributed, and displayed millions of its articles without permission, using the content to train and enhance its conversational AI tools. According to the filing, the startup's platform retrieves and generates responses that are identical or substantially similar to Times stories, directly competing with the newspaper's offerings and bypassing its paywall. The Times stated it had contacted Perplexity multiple times over the past 18 months, demanding the company cease using its material until a licensing agreement could be negotiated, but the requests went unheeded.

"While we believe in the ethical and responsible use...