By John Ruwitch
Publication Date: 2025-12-10 21:48:00
The New York Times and Chicago Tribune sued Perplexity last week, the latest in a series of publishers suing AI companies in a bid to set boundaries around a new technology powered by information.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The New York Times and Chicago Tribune have sued the artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI. These were separate cases last week for copyright infringement. And they’re the latest in a wave of lawsuits against AI firms by media companies trying to protect their business model. To explain all of this, we’ve got NPR’s John Ruwitch on the line. Hi, John.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so explain what exactly is at the heart of these latest cases.
RUWITCH: Yeah, they’re really about who can reuse content that’s been published on the internet by news companies and under what circumstances. Perplexity is one of the most popular AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. These chatbots are trained on data taken from the internet. And so you ask it a question, it gives you an AI-enabled answer. In a nutshell, what these news companies are arguing, though, is they’re accusing Perplexity of using their content without permission to create some of those answers. Steven Lieberman is a lawyer with the firm Rothwell Figg. He’s representing The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He says Perplexity should pay for the content, just like other kinds of companies have done for years and years.
STEVEN…