The New York Times Company v. Perplexity AI, Inc.
Issue
Whether Perplexity AI's unauthorized scraping, copying, and redistribution of copyrighted journalistic content through its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) "answer engine" products constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., and whether Perplexity's attribution of AI-generated "hallucinations" and content with undisclosed omissions to The New York Times constitutes trademark infringement and false designation of origin under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq.
What Happened
The New York Times filed this complaint in the Southern District of New York alleging that Perplexity AI unlawfully copied and distributed millions of Times-owned copyrighted works at two stages: (1) at the input stage, through automated crawlers ("PerplexityBot" and "Perplexity-User") used to build a search index and feed content to LLMs in real time; and (2) at the output stage, when Perplexity's GenAI products generated verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions of Times content. The Times further alleges Lanham Act violations arising from Perplexity's display of AI-generated hallucinations and inaccurately truncated content alongside The Times's registered trademarks, which it contends creates false impressions of association, sponsorship, or approval. The Times seeks damages, injunctive relief, and other equitable relief, and cites the Southern District's prior denial of Perplexity's motion to dismiss in the related *Dow Jones v. Perplexity AI* matter as supporting both jurisdiction and venue.
Why It Matters
This complaint directly tests whether copyright law's input/output analytical framework applies to RAG-based AI systems — potentially establishing that liability can attach at both the training/indexing stage and the generation stage — and separately advances the question of whether AI hallucinations falsely attributed to a known news brand constitute actionable trademark infringement and false designation of origin under the Lanham Act, a theory with broad implications for AI developer liability in the media context.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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