The New York Times is Suing Perplexity Over Copyright Infringement Allegations

The New York Times announced today that it’s suing AI startup Perplexity, which it’s accusing of repeated copyright violations. In the lawsuit, the publication said that Perplexity continued to use its content to generate its responses despite being asked repeatedly to stop over the past 18 months. Worse, the NYT is also accusing Perplexity of “damaging its brand” with incorrect responses, or “hallucinations” falsely attributed to the publication.

“Perplexity provides commercial products to its own users that substitute for The Times, without permission or remuneration,” the suit said. In some cases, Perplexity apparently uses entire NYT articles to provide answers that directly compete with the publication’s work, which wouldn’t qualify as fair use, the lawsuit claims.

On Thursday, Perplexity was also sued by The Chicago Tribune for copyright infringement. Last year, the AI startup was also sued by Dow Jones, the US company that publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and other publications, over similar accusations.

You may also remember that the NYT sued OpenAI and Microsoft two years ago, accusing the two companies of illegally using its articles to train their AI models. While that legal battle is still ongoing, the NYT announced an AI licensing deal with Amazon back in May 2025. The multi-year agreement allows the publication’s editorial content to appear across Amazon’s various platforms.

Perplexity launched a Publisher Program back in July 2024 to share advertising revenue with publishers and provide them with tools to track trends and content performance. In August, the company announced a new revenue-sharing plan for publishers, which can now be paid every time its Comet AI assistant uses an article to answer a question.

While Perplexity previously said that its Publisher Program welcomed high-profile partners, including TIME, Fortune, The Independent, Adweek, USA Today, other publications may be more interested in striking their own AI licensing deals with these companies. The financial terms of the partnership between Amazon and the New York Times were never disclosed, probably for good reasons.