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The New York Times has sent a cease and desist notice to AI startup Perplexity, demanding the company stop using its content for generative AI purposes. The move disclosed by Perplexity on Tuesday, adds to a growing number of legal clashes between media organizations and AI firms over content usage without permission.
In the letter, dated October 2 and shared with Reuters, the Times stated that Perplexity’s use of its content, including generating summaries and other outputs, violates copyright law. The newspaper accused the AI startup of continuing to use its material despite assurances that it would halt certain data-collection methods. Perplexity had previously told publishers it would cease "crawling" technologies to gather data but was still accused of improperly using NYT’s content.
Perplexity, a company that employs AI for the provision of answers to user’s questions, defended its practices. The company in its defense stated it was not ‘scraping’ data for the purpose of setting up foundation models claiming that it was simply indexing websites and cite factual contents to answer queries made by users. Whose content doesn’t avail like the New York times complaints raised, the content has been used without permission blocking such actions from happening. As a result, the newspaper sought data from Perplexity on how it was accessing the content of the paper and called for an urgent end to the unlawful use of its materials.
Perplexity declared that it would likewise give a response before the stipulated deadline of 30th October 10th, therefore complying with the request. The controversy illustrates a continuing problem faced by news outlets in attempting to shield their material from unauthorized usage by AI corporations.
This confrontation is, however, just one of many in the war between AI companies and media publishers which emanated from the introduction of AI models like ChatGPT. The New York Times and other media organizations have spoken out against the use of such systems which utilize content of the publishers for training purposes without compensating them.Earlier this year, the Times also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI accusing it of using millions of its articles to develop its chatbot.
As AI evolves so do the laws pertaining to how content can be used, with companies such as Perplexity, which already attracted the ire of reporters from Forbes and Wired for allegedly plagiarizing other publications, now finding themselves under renewed scrutiny. In response to these allegations, Perplexity announced Main as the newest money making scheme now available for publishers, a profit sharing plan. Put at the outset the fact that even if there were resolutions reached concerning other issues, the Litigation, there are some outstanding claims.
