Perplexity enters into a multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images

AI research startup Perplexity has signed a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images, giving it permission to display images from Getty across its AI-powered search and discovery tools. The deal represents a notable shift for the company, which has been hit by allegations of content theft and plagiarism, and signals an effort to establish more formal content partnerships.

Perplexity and Getty have been working together for more than a year, a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. Although it was never announced, Getty was a part of it Confusion Publishers ProgramIt is a plan to share advertising revenue with publishers when their content appears in a search query, the source said.

Today’s agreement is a new agreement. It’s not a traditional lump sum licensing deal, since Perplexity doesn’t train its underlying models, a source told TechCrunch, but would not clarify the terms.

Perplexity’s agreement with Getty appears to legitimize some of the startup’s past use of Getty’s stock images. Al-Hira came under fire last year because of A A series of accusations of plagiarism from Many news organizations. In one case, the startup was called out for pulling content from a Wall Street Journal article, including a Getty Image In that piece.

At that time, several outlets He doubted Whether the puzzling use of images constitutes Copyright infringement. Last year, a source told TechCrunch that Perplexity was working on a deal with Getty, but we were unable to confirm the deal after reaching out to the photo giant several times.

Recently, Reddit filed a lawsuit against confusion in October, for allegedly scraping user content “on an industrial and illegal scale” and circumventing technical measures to access data. Reddit has Data license agreement with OpenAI.

Perplexity says its Getty deal will help it display images better and include credits with links back to the original source when images appear in search results.

Nick Unsworth, vice president of strategic development at Getty He said The agreement “recognizes the importance of properly attributed consent and its value in enhancing AI-powered products.”

“Attribution and accuracy are fundamental to how people understand the world in the age of AI,” Jessica Chan, head of content and publisher partnerships at Perplexity, said in a statement. “Together, we help people discover answers through powerful visual storytelling while making sure they always know where this content came from and who created it.”

Perplexity’s focus on attribution is part of its strategy to defend against copyright accusations by discussing its use of publisher content — including paywalled content or content owned by publishers. They explicitly indicated that they did not want to scrape it -Constitutes “fair use” because publicly available facts are not protected by copyright.