Chicago Tribune sues Perplexity over copyright infringement

Chicago Tribune sues Perplexity over copyright infringement

The Chicago Tribune has filed a lawsuit against AI search engine Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement.

The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in New York on Thursday.

The Tribune's legal team had previously contacted Perplexity in mid-October to inquire whether the AI platform was using its content.

In response, Perplexity's lawyers claimed that while they didn't train their models with Tribune's work, they "may receive non-verbatim factual summaries."

Perplexity accused of verbatim content delivery

The Tribune's legal team has countered Perplexity's claim, saying that the AI search engine is providing its content verbatim.

The lawsuit also points a finger at Perplexity's retrieval augmented generation (RAG) technique.

This method is designed to reduce hallucinations by using only accurate or verified data sources.

The Tribune alleges that this system uses its content without permission and even bypasses paywalls through the Perplexity Comet browser to provide detailed article summaries.