New York Times Sues Perplexity AI Over Unauthorized Content Use: What Does The Lawsuit Say?

The suit alleges that Perplexity’s generative AI tools reproduce content from The Times without permission, undermining its work.

• According to The Times, Perplexity’s products scrape articles, videos, and podcasts to generate AI responses, often verbatim or substantially similar to the original material. 
• Perplexity says it gathers information from authoritative websites and then converts it into summaries.
• The Times contends that Perplexity’s process involves unauthorized copying and generating outputs for its chatbot.

The New York Times Co. (NYT) has filed a legal complaint against Perplexity AI, accusing the startup of illegally copying and distributing its copyrighted content. 

The suit alleges that Perplexity’s generative AI tools, including its popular “answer engine” chatbot, reproduce content from The Times without permission, undermining its work.

The Background

According to The Times, Perplexity’s products scrape articles, videos, podcasts, and other content to generate AI responses, often verbatim or substantially similar to the original material. 

This activity allegedly violates both copyright protections and trademark rights. The newspaper said that the AI firm substitutes its own commercial products for Times’ content, depriving the publication of revenue and control over its work.

“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products.”

-The New York Times 

The New York Times’ stock traded over 1% higher on Friday morning. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the stock remained in ‘bullish’ territory amid ‘extremely high’ message volume levels.

Perplexity’s AI Model And Claims

Perplexity promotes its AI as an “intelligent research assistant” that provides concise answers without users needing to visit multiple sources. The company claims that it gathers information from authoritative websites and then converts it into summaries. 

However, The Times contends that this process involves unauthorized copying, feeding its content into Perplexity’s AI index and generating outputs for its chatbot, APIs, and other AI products.

This lawsuit forms part of a broader wave of legal actions from media companies against generative AI developers over copyright infringement. 

NYT stock has gained over 25% in 2025 and over 19% in the last 12 months. 

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