By EMARKETER
Publication Date: 2025-12-05 05:00:00
The news: The New York Times filed a lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity on Friday, adding to the more than 40 current court cases between AI companies and copyright holders. The Times claims that Perplexity repeatedly violated its copyrights despite several requests that the AI company stop using its content without an official agreement.
The trend: The lawsuit is the second of The Times’ cases against AI companies—and another in a long list of similar incidents.
- The Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, claiming that the companies used The Times articles to train their AI systems without permission or compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft disputed the claims.
- Perplexity faced another lawsuit in August 2024 from The Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones, The New York Post, and more publications for similar violation claims. Reddit has also sued Perplexity and data-scraping companies over claims that they improperly collected and purchased the platform’s user-generated content.
- Rolling Stone parent company Penske Media in September became the first major publisher to sue Google over claims that its AI Overviews feature uses journalism without permission to train and display AI summaries, significantly reducing publisher referral traffic.
Why it matters: Mounting lawsuits represent fundamental questions about copyright, compensation, and where the relationship between publishers and AI companies is headed.
- Lawsuits like The Times’ highlights the…
