Chicago Tribune Sues AI Search Engine Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Violations

The Chicago Tribune filed a federal lawsuit against the AI-powered search engine Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement.

The suit, filed in a New York court, says Perplexity has been using the Tribune content without permission, renewing debates over AI and intellectual property rights.

Allegations of Unauthorized Use of Content

According to the suit, the Tribune contacted Perplexity in mid-October to confirm that the publication's material was being used for AI training.

Perplexity's legal team allegedly replied that it does not train the models directly on Tribune material but conceded the AI "may receive non-verbatim factual summaries."

The Tribune says this is not true and that Perplexity provides content verbatim, effectively reproducing its articles without permission or license.

Scrutiny Over RAG and Paywall Bypass

The Tribune also targets Perplexity's use of Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG, a system designed to decrease AI hallucinations, a term used to describe when AI uses made-up information by relying on verified sources.

Perplexity's RAG systems use the newspaper's content without permission, the Tribune says, and its Comet browser sidesteps the Tribune's paywall to create detailed summaries of articles. The allegations raise broader questions about how AI models obtain and regenerate copyrighted materials in real time.

Perplexity's Lawsuits

The lawsuit is part of a trend of media companies challenging the use of their content by AI platforms. Since AI has been widely used, it has become more controversial to the point that it affects almost all businesses.

According to TechCrunch, Tribune and 16 other publications filed a similar suit against OpenAI and Microsoft over AI model training. Yet another spate of lawsuits filed in November by the same group shows the growing tension between traditional media and AI developers regarding intellectual property rights.

In September, Merriam-Webster and Britannica sued Perplexity over copyright and trademark violations. Last month, Amazon accused the AI firm of its "shady tactics" in AI shopping.