Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. v. Perplexity AI, Inc.

Issue: Whether Perplexity AI's automated answer engine, which generates verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions of copyrighted content in response to user-directed queries, constitutes "volitional conduct" by Perplexity sufficient to support direct copyright infringement liability under 17 U.S.C. § 106, as governed by the Second Circuit's *Cablevision* volitional-conduct doctrine.

Encyclopædia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sued Perplexity AI alleging, among other claims, direct copyright infringement (Count II) based on outputs generated by Perplexity's retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) answer engine that allegedly reproduced plaintiffs' content verbatim or near-verbatim in response to user queries. Perplexity moved to dismiss Count II under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing that the copying was initiated entirely by user commands to a fully automated system and that under *The Cartoon Network LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.* ("*Cablevision*"), 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008), it is the user—not the technology provider—who engages in the requisite volitional conduct when directing an automated system to copy specific content. Perplexity further argued that, even if the volitional-conduct argument failed, plaintiffs pleaded no facts of infringing outputs for eleven of the fourteen registered copyrights asserted under Count II, warranting dismissal of those claims on independent pleading-deficiency grounds.

This motion squarely presents to a federal court the question of whether the *Cablevision* volitional-conduct doctrine—developed in the context of automated cable DVR systems—extends to shield generative AI answer engines from direct copyright infringement liability when their outputs reproduce third-party copyrighted material at a user's explicit direction. The court's ruling could establish a significant precedent governing the allocation of direct infringement liability between AI platform operators and their users across the rapidly expanding universe of RAG-based generative AI products.