Search engine startup Perplexity AI faces legal action from The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, expressing disappointment and surprise at the lawsuit filed Monday.
Perplexity AI has responded to the lawsuit by highlighting its existing revenue-sharing programme with leading publishers including TIME, Fortune, and Der Spiegel, while maintaining its door remains open for future collaboration.
The lawsuit joins approximately three dozen similar cases filed by media companies against generative AI tools. Perplexity directly challenges these legal actions' underlying premise about the ownership of public information.
"The common theme betrayed by those complaints collectively is that they wish this technology didn't exist," Perplexity stated in its official response. "They prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations, and no one can do anything with those publicly reported facts without paying a toll."
The company also emphasises its consistent practice of listing sources above answers and providing in-line citations, noting that other AI chatbots have begun adopting similar transparency measures.
Perplexity contests the lawsuit's allegations on two main points. First, they argue that the complaint's cited examples of "regurgitated" outputs mischaracterise the source material and the platform's purpose. Second, they dispute the claim of unresponsiveness to News Corp, stating they responded to outreach the same day it was received.
The company describes a pattern in similar cases where plaintiffs allegedly include provocative examples in complaints but later disavow these same examples when pressed for details during litigation.
Perplexity maintains that "AI-enhanced search engines are not going away" and remains open to collaboration with media companies.