The New York Times sent a cease and desist letter demanding that Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity stop accessing and using its content in AI summaries and other output. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the document. 

The letter argues that Perplexity has been “unjustly enriched” by using the publisher’s “expressive, carefully written and researched, and edited journalism without a license,” which it says violates copyright laws.

This isn’t the paper’s first tangle with AI companies — it’s suing OpenAI for using content without consent to train ChatGPT. Other publishers have also accused Perplexity of unethical web scraping. 

A recent study from Copyleaks, a tool to check for plagiarism and AI-generated content, found that Perplexity was able to summarize paywalled content from publishers.

Perplexity recently launched an ad-revenue share scheme to give some money back to publishers. 

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told WSJ the startup is interested in working with the NYT, stating, “We have no interest in being anyone’s antagonist here.”

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