CNN sues Perplexity, alleging unlawful distribution of copyrighted content

Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products, CNN said in its lawsuit.United States news channel CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in New York federal court, alleging the AI search engine provider is unlawfully distributing its copyrighted content, marking the latest legal tussle between the AI firm and a news publisher.The complaint, filed on Thursday, said that Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products and distribute “identical or substantially similar” competing content.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Hottest year on record almost certain to occur by end of 2030, UN warnslist 2 of 4Gold Rush: Did CIA agent steal $40m in gold bars via work expenses?list 3 of 4US Treasury threatens Oman with sanctions over Hormuz Straitlist 4 of 4US inflation surges to three-year high amid tensions with Iranend of list“You can’t copyright facts,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in response to the lawsuit.CNN is asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking Perplexity from violating its intellectual property rights.“CNN’s lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits,” the Warner Bros-owned news company said in a statement.“By exploiting CNN’s reporting in this manner, Perplexity violates the protections afforded by Copyright Law and undermines the economic incentives that make original newsgathering possible,” CNN said in the complaint.Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and writers have worried about their content being repurposed to appear in the results of a chatbot query, triggering battles over copyright, compensation and ownership.CNN’s lawsuit is one of dozens of high-stakes US cases brought by copyright owners, including news outlets, authors and publishers, against tech companies over alleged misuse of their work to train large language models. Anthropic was the first AI company to settle one of these cases last year, agreeing to pay $1.5bn to resolve a class action lawsuit from a group of authors.