Merriam‑Webster & Encyclopedia Britannica Sue Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

Merriam‑Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica have filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court accusing Perplexity of unlawfully copying their copyrighted materials to power the company’s “answer engine.” The complaint alleges that Perplexity not only copies content en masse without authorization or payment, but also sometimes produces false or fabricated answers (hallucinations) that are wrongly attributed to the publishers.

“Perplexity’s so-called ‘answer engine’ eliminates users’ clicks on Plaintiffs’ and other web publishers’ websites—and, in turn, starves web publishers of revenue—by generating responses to users’ queries that substitute the content from other information websites,” the filing says.

The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages and a court order blocking Perplexity from misusing their content.

Background

• This is not Perplexity’s first legal challenge: last year the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post sued the company on similar copyright claims. More recently, Japanese publishers Nikkei and The Asahi Shimbun filed suits as well.
• Key legal issues center on whether AI companies can lawfully reproduce and present copyrighted content in generated answers and who is liable for AI hallucinations attributed to third-party sources.

For further reading, see coverage by Engadget: Engadget: Perplexity sued by the dictionary

Originally reported by Engadget.