New York Times targets Perplexity over AI content scraping

Legal clash over AI content usage: The New York Times has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity, an AI startup backed by Jeff Bezos, demanding it stop using the newspaper’s content without authorization.

• The Times accuses Perplexity of unjust enrichment through unauthorized use of its journalism, giving the startup an October 30 deadline to respond.
• The newspaper alleges that Perplexity has circumvented its anti-scraping and anti-bot measures, specifically mentioning “PerplexityBot” in its robots.txt file.
• Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas expressed interest in collaboration with publishers, including The New York Times, stating they have no intention of being antagonistic.

Perplexity’s stance and content policies: The AI company defends its practices and expresses willingness to engage with publishers while maintaining transparency about its content usage.

• A Perplexity representative stated that the company will respond to the letter by the deadline and emphasized their commitment to transparency regarding content policies.
• The company claims it is not scraping data to build foundation models but rather indexing web pages and citing content to inform responses to user queries.
• In June, Perplexity told PCMag that its PerplexityBot respects robots.txt files and operates within Amazon Web Services’ Terms of Service.

Broader industry context: The dispute between The New York Times and Perplexity is part of a larger trend of tensions between AI companies and content creators over data usage and copyright issues.

• Other news outlets, including Condé Nast and Forbes, have also sent cease-and-desist letters to Perplexity, accusing the company of unauthorized content usage.
• Some AI firms argue that web scraping falls under “fair use,” though this claim has not been legally established.
• Experts warn that AI companies may be facing a shortage of fresh, human-generated data for training their models.

Legal precedents and ongoing disputes: The Perplexity case is not isolated, as other AI companies face similar legal challenges from news organizations and content creators.

• The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2022, which is still ongoing.
• A group of newspapers, including the Orange County Register and New York Daily News, sued OpenAI and Microsoft in April 2023 for similar reasons.
• These legal actions highlight the growing tension between AI companies and content creators over intellectual property rights and fair compensation.

Industry responses and adaptations: Some AI companies and news organizations are exploring collaborative solutions to address content usage concerns.

• Several news outlets, including Associated Press, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal, have entered into content licensing deals with AI companies.
• These agreements aim to provide a framework for legal and mutually beneficial use of news content in AI applications.
• However, many AI firms continue to scrape web content without explicit permission, leading to ongoing disputes.

Perplexity’s unique challenges: The AI startup faces specific criticism regarding its content usage and attribution practices.

• Perplexity has been accused of generating its own stories based on news outlets’ content without adequate citation or visible source linking.
• The company disputes these characterizations, maintaining that its practices are within acceptable bounds.

Analyzing deeper: The dispute between The New York Times and Perplexity underscores the complex legal and ethical landscape surrounding AI and content usage. As AI technology continues to advance, the industry faces critical questions about fair use, intellectual property rights, and the balance between innovation and content creators’ rights. The outcome of this and similar cases may have far-reaching implications for the future of AI development and its relationship with traditional media and content producers.