Dow Jones and the New York Post have opened a new legal front against AI search, accusing Perplexity of building its answer engine on journalism it did not license. The lawsuit, filed in New York on Monday, claims the startup copied publisher content at scale and used it to produce responses that compete with the publishers’ own websites.
The complaint places Perplexity at the center of a wider dispute between news organizations and artificial intelligence companies. Publishers want to protect reporting, analysis, opinion and the revenue tied to that work. AI companies want access to current information so their tools can answer questions quickly and directly.
What the lawsuit alleges
Dow Jones and the New York Post, both subsidiaries of News Corp, accuse Perplexity of a “brazen scheme” involving their journalism. The publishers say the startup is “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying” and using that material inside an AI-driven search product.
The lawsuit says Perplexity’s answer engine copies “copyrighted news content, analysis, and opinion as inputs into its internal database.” According to the complaint, those inputs are then used to generate answers for users that can function as replacements for visiting news and information websites.
That alleged substitution is central to the publishers’ argument. Their claim is not only that content was copied, but that Perplexity’s product can reduce the need for users to click through to the original publishers. The lawsuit says the company is “diverting customers and critical revenues” from the publishers while “freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce.”
The titles involved include The Wall Street Journal, which sits under Dow Jones. The case includes claims of copyright infringement.
Why Perplexity’s model is under scrutiny
Perplexity offers a search engine that gives users immediate answers to questions. The service includes sources and citations, and it uses large language models from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
That design makes the product different from a simple list of links. A user can ask a question and receive a synthesized answer in the interface. For publishers, the concern is that this format may absorb the value of original reporting while leaving the publisher with less traffic, fewer customer relationships and weaker revenue opportunities.
The lawsuit frames the issue as both an input problem and an output problem. On the input side, the publishers allege large-scale copying of protected work. On the output side, they argue that Perplexity’s answers are meant to stand in for the original article or website.
The publishers also allege brand harm. Monday’s lawsuit says Perplexity falsely attributed some content to them and sometimes produced “answers” containing false information. In that version of the risk, the publisher may be connected to material it did not actually publish or endorse.
A larger clash over AI and news
The dispute is part of a growing conflict between publishers and AI companies. Artificial intelligence products rely on content to train models and to give users timely responses. News publishers, meanwhile, argue that their work has economic value and cannot simply be taken for use in competing tools.
The source article points to two paths now developing in parallel:
- Commercial deals: Some AI companies have signed partnerships and licensing agreements with publishers.
- Legal pressure: Some publishers are suing or sending notices to stop AI products from using copyrighted journalism without permission.
OpenAI is named as one company that has reached commercial partnerships and licensing agreements with publishers, including News Corp and the Financial Times. Those arrangements allow ChatGPT users to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links.
At the same time, legal challenges continue. The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. It also sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice last week, telling the company to stop using its journalism, including summaries and other types of content.
For publishers, the stakes are not limited to training data. AI-driven search engines can operate close to the point where readers make decisions: they ask a question, get an answer and may never visit the news site that produced the original information. That is why licensing, attribution, summaries, links and substitution are all part of the same dispute.
The failed licensing approach
The lawsuit says the publishers contacted Perplexity before filing the case. In July, they sent a letter that put the startup on notice about the legal issues and offered to discuss a possible licensing agreement. According to the lawsuit, Perplexity “did not bother to respond.”
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson sharply criticized the company’s conduct. He said: “Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers, and News Corp.” He also said: “The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source.”
The source article also notes that Perplexity is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in a funding round that will value it at $8 billion. That financial backdrop matters to the publishers’ position because they are arguing that a fast-growing AI company is using their work to build value without paying for it.
Perplexity has faced criticism beyond this lawsuit. Forbes and Wired have accused the startup of plagiarism. Wired called it “a Bullshit Machine” after an investigation reportedly showed it was “surreptitiously scraping” websites for data.
What comes next for AI search
Perplexity has previously told publishers it would stop using “crawling” technology. It has also launched a revenue-sharing initiative. The company is planning to bring advertising to its platform, courting similar brands to news outlets as it looks for revenue.
Those steps have not ended publisher concern. The core question remains whether an AI answer engine can rely on copyrighted journalism without a license when the resulting answers may compete with the original sources.
Perplexity did not immediately return a request for comment. For now, the lawsuit adds pressure to a market already divided between licensing deals and courtroom battles. It also signals that publishers are willing to challenge AI search directly when they believe citations and summaries are not enough to protect their work.