The cable news channel has accused the AI company of “massive copyright infringement.”
CNN joins the growing line of media companies suing Perplexity for copyright infringement. The cable news network has accused the AI search company of “massive copyright infringement” that included wrongly scraping its website and copying more than 17,000 pieces of its content.
The lawsuit, which was filed Thursday, claims the AI company “unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies and distributes CNN’s content from CNN digital platforms and third-party platforms.” It also accuses AI tools of reproducing “verbatim copies” of its articles, including paywalled stories, in answers to users’ questions. Perplexity’s AI tools have reportedly falsely attributed “illusory” content to CNN, which the company says is a violation of its trademarks.
“CNN’s lawsuit is based on the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create original content,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement to the outlet. “The public relies on high-quality news journalism reported by humans to understand their world, the production of which is often dangerous and expensive. Commercial operators can and should pay to use it.”
CNN is not the first media company to sue Perplexity for scraping content without permission. the new York Times, Chicago TribuneReddit, Merriam-Webster, Encyclopædia Britannica and nikki A case has also been filed against the company. “You can’t copyright facts,” Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s chief communications officer, said in a statement to CNN.
Interestingly, it seems that Perplexity was at one point trying to make a deal with CNN that would have allowed it to use some of the network’s content. According to the lawsuit, the two companies were in talks last year about a deal that would make paywalled CNN content available to Perplexity’s paid subscribers. The deal ultimately fell through, but Perplexity continued to use CNN’s name and content in its products despite warnings from the TV network’s legal team. Panic never responded, the lawsuit says.
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