CNN Suing AI Firm Perplexity Over ‘Massive Copyright Infringement’
CNN has sued Perplexity, an artificial intelligence company, alleging that they’ve infringed on the news network’s copyrights and trademarks by illegally copying and distributing content without their consent, Variety reports.
The lawsuit was officially filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Perplexity is being accused of taking over 17,000 stories, photographs, videos, and other content from CNN and using it to train its AI products.
This complaint marks the first time the multinational news television channel and website is filing a legal case against an AI company and seeking to protect its copyrights. It’s also believed to be the first litigation of its kind from a TV network. However, this is not the first time Perplexity specifically has been sued over copyright infringement and similar claims.
Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the New York Post have all filed similar lawsuits against the company.
A spokesperson for CNN stated that they do believe in “actively embracing the opportunities AI creates” as a network, however, Perplexity “should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content” in order to train their models and overall “exploit” their created material.
“The public rely on high-quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce,” the CNN spokesperson said.
“Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it. We prefer that they do so through sensible licensing arrangements, but if they refuse to do that as Perplexity has so far refused to do, they will have to pay through legal damages. There is no free option.”
A spokesperson for Perplexity told Variety that when it comes to this suit, “you can’t copyright facts.”
In the 54-page federal complaint, CNN emphasized how Perplexity’s former advertisements helped users skip the “extra steps and clicks” in order to access news content. They also explained that last year, they spoke with Perplexity and attempted to come to a deal, but couldn’t agree on terms.
“As a result, before and after Perplexity’s negotiations with CNN, Perplexity knew that it was not permitted to access CNN’s content or to use its trademarks or service marks,” the complaint stated.
“Perplexity’s conduct violates CNN’s exclusive rights under the Copyright Act at two principal stages: First, at the input stage, Perplexity unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes CNN’s content from CNN Digital Platforms and third-party platforms using software programs, including ‘PerplexityBot’ and ‘Perplexity-User,’ to build an AI-First search index and to provide CNN’s content in real time as input to LLMs to formulate responses to users’ prompts. And second, at the output stage, when Perplexity’s GenAI Products generate outputs that are identical or substantially similar to CNN’s content,” the suit reads.
It also emphasized within the suit that Perplexity is violating CNN’s trademarks “by falsely claiming an affiliation between Perplexity and CNN that does not exist. Perplexity’s GenAI products generate fabricated content that claims that its users can pay to upgrade and get access to CNN’s premium content, when no such option exists.
Thus, Perplexity uses CNN’s famous, registered trademarks and falsely attributes an affiliation between Perplexity and CNN to its users which causes confusion,” the suit continues.
“Perplexity’s use infringes CNN’s exclusive rights in its federally registered trademarks, and has caused and is likely to cause confusion, mistake, or deception as to whether the articles Perplexity provides are associated or affiliated with, or are sponsored, endorsed, or approved by CNN,” the complaint reads.
“Perplexity’s use is intended to reap the benefit of consumers’ trust in CNN.”
CNN is asking the court to fulfill its statutory damages cost, and enforce that Perplexity can no longer use its content.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.