Perplexity sued by The New York Times and Chicago Tribune

As The New York Times and Chicago Tribune sue Perplexity for copyright infringement, marketers should brace for shifts in content access and legal norms

Two of the United States’ most prominent media organizations — the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times — filed lawsuits last week against AI search startup Perplexity, accusing it of large-scale copyright infringement.

These legal actions are the latest in a growing movement by media companies to push back against generative AI tools that use or display their content without permission. For marketers who rely on AI-enhanced search and content tools, the lawsuits raise real questions about data ethics, platform stability, and long-term compliance risk.

This article unpacks the key claims against Perplexity, explains what retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) has to do with it, and outlines what marketers should prepare for as the legal landscape evolves.

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What happened?

On Thursday December 4, the Chicago…