CNN is suing Perplexity, alleging illegal distribution of copyrighted material | Media News

Confused copied thousands of CNN articles, videos and photos to promote its ads, CNN said in its lawsuit.

US news channel CNN has sued Perplexity in federal court in New York, alleging that the AI ​​search engine provider is illegally distributing copyrighted content, marking the latest dispute between an AI company and a news publisher.

The complaint, which was filed Thursday, alleges that Perplexity illegally copied hundreds of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products and distribute “the same or similar” content to competing content.

“You can’t copy facts,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in response to the lawsuit.

CNN is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction to stop Perplexity from infringing its intellectual property rights.

“CNN’s lawsuit represents the idea that Perplexity, a multibillion-dollar company, should not be defrauding the companies that make the original content that Perplexity does,” Warner Bros. said in a statement.

“By using CNN’s reports in this way, Perplexity violates the protections afforded by copyright law and undermines the financial incentives that make original news gathering possible,” CNN said in a complaint.

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and authors have been concerned about their content being returned to appear in chatbot query results, leading to disputes over copyright, refunds and ownership.

The CNN case is one of the largest US lawsuits filed by copyright owners, including news media, writers and publishers, against technology companies for misusing their work in teaching major languages. Anthropic was the first AI company to settle one of these lawsuits last year, agreeing to pay $1.5bn to settle a class action lawsuit.

CNN’s suit is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed against Perplexity, which uses AI to scan websites and answer user questions, alleging the company violated privacy and illegally removed data to train its technology.

Paradox is also facing lawsuits from The New York Times, Reddit and Dow Jones, among others.

A number of news companies have now signed licenses and agreements with Big Tech and AI companies to ensure that their models have access to authentic news, as well as refunding publishers and relinking original content.