The New York Times has filed a significant lawsuit against the AI search engine Perplexity, accusing the startup of widespread copyright infringement and trademark violations that threaten the foundation of the news industry.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The complaint, filed in federal court in New York, alleges that Perplexity has built its business by illegally scraping millions of articles from The Times to power its "answer engine," which provides users with detailed summaries that often serve as direct substitutes for the original reporting.[2][6] This legal challenge marks a critical escalation in the growing conflict between media organizations and artificial intelligence companies over the unauthorized use of proprietary content to train and operate AI models.[1][7][8] The lawsuit is not the first of its kind for either party; The Times is also engaged in a similar legal battle with OpenAI, and Perplexity faces a growing number of lawsuits from other publishers, including Dow Jones, the Chicago Tribune, and Reddit.[9][10][4][8]

At the heart of The New York Times' complaint is the allegation that Perplexity's core function constitutes massive and direct copyright infringement.[11][2] The lawsuit asserts that Perplexity's technology, known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), copies vast amounts of content from The Times' digital platforms without authorization or compensation to generate responses for its users.[9][2][7] According to the filing, these AI-generated answers often reproduce verbatim or near-verbatim excerpts of copyrighted articles, including those behind the publication's paywall.[7][6][12] The Times argues that by providing these comprehensive summaries, marketed with the promise to "skip the links," Perplexity effectively eliminates the need for users to visit the newspaper's website, thereby depriving it of crucial subscription and advertising revenue that funds its journalism.[2] The complaint provides specific examples, such as Perplexity summarizing product reviews from Wirecutter, a Times-owned publication, so thoroughly that a user would have no incentive to click through to the original source.[2] The lawsuit further claims that despite The Times implementing technical measures to block Perplexity's web crawlers, the startup continued to access the site using "stealth" tactics to bypass these protections.[2]

Beyond the direct copyright claims, The New York Times also accuses Perplexity of damaging its brand and diluting its trademark through the generation of false information, a phenomenon commonly referred to as "hallucinations" in the context of AI.[11][2][4] The lawsuit alleges that Perplexity's search engine has produced fabricated content and falsely attributed it to The New York Times, misleading users and tarnishing the newspaper's reputation for accuracy and journalistic integrity.[11][1][2][12] This issue of brand harm is a significant component of the legal action, highlighting the risks publishers face when their names are associated with inaccurate or entirely made-up information generated by AI systems. The Times asserts that this practice constitutes a violation of its trademarks under the Lanham Act.[4][12] The publisher is seeking substantial damages and an injunction to prevent Perplexity from continuing its alleged unauthorized use of The Times' content.[4]

The lawsuit against Perplexity is a focal point in a much broader, industry-wide reckoning over the relationship between AI developers and content creators. Media companies and publishers argue that their significant investments in creating high-quality journalism are being exploited by tech companies to build lucrative commercial products without fair compensation.[13][14] The legal battles are testing the boundaries of existing copyright law and the applicability of doctrines like "fair use," which AI companies may argue allows them to use publicly available data for transformative purposes.[15] However, news organizations contend that the systematic scraping of their entire archives for commercial gain goes far beyond the scope of fair use. The outcomes of these lawsuits, including the one filed by The Times against Perplexity, are expected to set critical legal precedents that could fundamentally reshape the economics of both the news and AI industries.[16] While some AI companies have entered into licensing agreements with publishers, the ongoing litigation underscores a deep-seated conflict over the value of original content in the age of generative AI.[10]

In conclusion, The New York Times' lawsuit against Perplexity represents a pivotal confrontation over intellectual property rights in the era of artificial intelligence. The newspaper's allegations of systematic content scraping, copyright infringement, paywall circumvention, and brand damage strike at the core of the AI search engine's business model.[2][7][4] As Perplexity faces mounting legal pressure from a coalition of media outlets, the case underscores the urgent need for clear legal and ethical frameworks governing how AI technologies interact with copyrighted material. The resolution of this dispute will likely have far-reaching consequences, influencing the future development of AI, the sustainability of digital journalism, and the very definition of fair use in a world increasingly mediated by algorithms. The struggle highlights a fundamental tension between technological innovation and the established rights of creators, a conflict that courts and regulators are now being forced to address.