The New York Times (NASDAQ: NYT) continues its battle against artificial intelligence (AI) companies, this time filing a cease-and-desist order against Perplexity, the AI startup backed by Jeff Bezos. The New York Times claims that Perplexity has violated its copyright by using the newspaper’s content in its outputs without authorization. Perplexity allegedly bypassed paywalls and provided summaries of its articles, essentially allowing users to access premium content without visiting the Times’ website or paying for the content.
This isn’t the first time the Times has targeted AI companies for copyright infringement. Earlier this year, the NYT filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), claiming they allegedly used the newspaper’s content to train models like ChatGPT. Similarly, Wired magazine accused Perplexity of scraping its content illegally earlier this year.
These cases reflect a never-ending tension between AI service providers and publishers. It’s in the interest of an AI company to get its hands on all the data …