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The New York Times says it is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement. Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto
By Business Insider AI News Desk
Dec 5, 2025, 11:59 AM ET
- The New York Times says Perplexity lifted its copyrighted stories for its AI search tool, in a new lawsuit.
- Other media companies, including Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, have also sued Perplexity.
- The Times has also sued OpenAI, alleging it has used its content without permission.
Perplexity, the AI search startup, is facing another copyright lawsuit.
The New York Times said it was suing Perplexity, alleging it has copied and distributed its journalism without permission.
The complaint says Perplexity reproduced pieces “verbatim or near-verbatim,” threatening the Times’ subscription and licensing revenue.
Perplexity’s use of copyrighted material has been questioned before. Forbes and Wired accused the company of pulling material from their sites while navigating around tools meant to block unauthorized scraping. Those publishers said Perplexity’s crawlers repackaged premium stories inside its answers.
Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post are also suing Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement.
Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. In a blog post last year, the company wrote that “Perplexity, from its founding moment, has always listed sources above answers and provided in-line citations for every part of an answer.” It further said, “tools like Perplexity provide a fundamentally transformative way for people to learn facts about the world.”
Social media giant Reddit has also taken aim at Perplexity. In an October suit, it said Perplexity built a multibillion-dollar business by harvesting its content through search-engine caches to get around technical roadblocks. Reddit argued the tactic allowed Perplexity to skirt pay and access controls.
The Times’s suit against Perplexity comes as it presses a case against OpenAI. In that dispute, a federal judge ordered OpenAI to hand over 20 million de-identified ChatGPT logs so the Times can see whether its stories appear inside model outputs.
A group of media companies, including Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, filed a lawsuit this year against Cohere, an AI company that builds large language models for enterprise use. The media companies accused Cohere of repurposing their content without permission.
Cohere called the suit “misguided” and said “the assertions made show a lack of understanding about Cohere’s business and the uses of its technology.”
Correction, December 5, 2025 — This article has been updated to correct a reference to The New York Times lawsuit against Perplexity. The complaint says Perplexity reproduced Times content “verbatim or near-verbatim.”
This story was written using Business Insider’s AI tools and edited by a Business Insider editor.
Original:
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-perplexity-lawsuit-copyright-infringement-ai-data-2025-12
