The Chicago Tribune files a lawsuit against Perplexity TechCrunch

Chicago Tribune foot AI search engine Perplexity sued on Thursday, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit, seen by TechCrunch, was filed in federal court in New York.

The Tribune claims its lawyers contacted Perplexity in mid-October and asked whether the artificial intelligence search engine was using its content, according to the complaint. Perplexity’s lawyers countered that it did not train models on the Tribune’s work, but that it “may receive non-verbatim factual summaries,” the lawsuit alleges.

However, the Tribune’s lawyers argue that Perplexity presents the Tribune’s content verbatim.

Interestingly, the paper’s lawyers also describe Perplexity’s Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) as the culprit. RAG is a method used to reduce hallucinations by making the model use only an accurate or verified data source. The Tribune argues that Perplexity uses the newspaper’s content in its RAG systems and deletes it without permission. Additionally, it claims Perplexity’s Comet browser bypasses the newspaper’s paywall to provide detailed summaries of those articles.

The Tribune is one of 17 news publications under the MediaNews and Tribune Publishing group Which filed a lawsuit OpenAI and Microsoft announced prototype training materials in April. This lawsuit is ongoing. Nine more are from these publishers File a lawsuit against The model maker and its cloud provider are also due in November.

While the creators provided Many lawsuits Against model makers over the use of their work for model training, we will have to see whether the courts consider the legal responsibilities of the RAG as well.

Perplexity did not immediately respond to a Chicago Tribune story about its lawsuit, nor to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Bewilderment is faced with other such suits. Reddit I made one in October. Dow Jones is Also sued. Last month while Amazon did not file a lawsuit, but rather threatened to do so By sending a cease and desist letter via AI Browser Shopping.