By Charlotte Tobitt
Publication Date: 2026-03-03 08:14:00
Perplexity has accused Dow Jones and the New York Post of carrying out a fishing exercise and “entrapment” by attempting to encourage its AI chatbot to spit out verbatim copies of its articles to back up their copyright claim.
Perplexity wrote to a New York judge last week arguing the News Corp subsidiaries should be forced to hand over records showing the hundreds of queries they made to “fish” for a basis to sue within its AI search tool before launching the claim in October 2024.
Perplexity told Judge Katherine Failla: “This discovery would reveal an inconvenient truth: Plaintiffs repeatedly and deceptively crossed the line from investigation to entrapment.”
Perplexity is arguing that the publishers have no privilege over the information shared in its search tool because it was entered into its platform with the intention to sue.
News Corp subsidiaries Dow Jones (which publishes the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Group) and NYP Holdings (for the New York Post) have accused Perplexity of “massive freeriding” on their “protected content”, meaning the tech giant was competing against the publisher “for the engagement of the same news consuming audience, and in turn to deprive plaintiffs of critical…
