Recent conflicts between online publishers and AI search startup Perplexity highlight a growing battle over control and profit from information in the AI era. Disputes escalate from using "publicly available" material to train AI models to create summaries, "guide" pages, and verbatim copies of previously published content.
Forbes has threatened Perplexity with legal action for using copyrighted material, claiming the startup reposted their stories and converted them into podcasts and YouTube videos. Perplexity recently introduced a feature allowing users to publish the service's responses as web pages and share them widely, prompting accusations of plagiarism from traditional publishers.
Wired reported that Perplexity was not adhering to website rules for content access, attributing the issue to a third-party web crawler. Ironically, Wired accused Perplexity of plagiarizing their story about the company's practices.
Perplexity AI, backed by tech heavyweights including Jeff Bezos, Google's Jeff Dean, and former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, boasts a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Despite its growth, it remains smaller than competitors OpenAI and Anthropic. Perplexity's essential product is its well-packaged summaries of complex news in text, audio, and video formats.
While content aggregation is familiar, Perplexity's AI-driven approach, which downplays links, poses a more significant threat to publishers. Microsoft-backed OpenAI has begun paying publishers to use their work, and Perplexity has expressed a desire to negotiate revenue-sharing deals. However, such subsidies are unlikely to compensate for all potential revenue losses.
In this evolving AI landscape, smaller startups like Perplexity push the boundaries, allowing larger companies to step in once legal and industry practices are established. While Perplexity is currently in the spotlight, the broader concern for publishers remains with giants like Google, whose AI-driven search summaries are also causing anxiety. Ultimately, Google's decisions will significantly impact the publishing industry more than Perplexity's actions. Still, publishers continue challenging fast-moving startups as they navigate the immediate effects of AI-driven changes.