Perplexity responds that the BBC lacks a fundamental understanding of tech and IP law.
The BBC is threatening to take legal action against Perplexity, accusing the start-up of scraping its content to train AI models.
The Financial Times, which broke the news, reported that the UK broadcaster sent a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, demanding that the start-up stop scraping all BBC content to train its AI models and delete copies of the broadcaster’s material it has – unless it can provide a “proposal for financial compensation”.
Perplexity, in a statement to the financial publication, called the BBC’s claims “manipulative and opportunistic”, adding that the broadcaster had a “fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.”
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine backed by investors including Nvidia, Softbank and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Last month, it was reported that the start-up was finalising a raise of $500m led by Accel, the US VC firm.
According to its website, the start-up gathers information from “authoritative sources” such as articles, websites and journals. It then distils that information, delivering users answers to their queries in a conversational tone.
The BBC claims that parts of its content were reproduced verbatim by Perplexity.
Last year, the New York Times sent Perplexity a ‘cease and desist’ notice, demanding that the start-up stop using its content for generative AI. Similar allegations of content scraping were made by tech magazine Wired and Forbes.
A lawsuit brought against the start-up by Dow Jones (the publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and the New York Post accused Perplexity of “hallucinating” fake sections of new stories and falsely crediting them to legitimate publications.
The start-up launched a revenue sharing program with news publishers last year, after it began receiving backlash over its content scouring practices.
As of last December, the partner program includes big names such as Fortune, Time, the LA Times, World History Encyclopaedia and several non-English publishers.
Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters CPO David Wong told SiliconRepublic.com that not only is it possible to create AI systems that respect copyright, but that respecting copyright will further those systems and improve accessibility to information.
However, it seems that AI start-ups and news publishers are increasingly at odds with each other.
More than a dozen top news publishers, including Forbes, Condé Nast, Vox, The Guardian and Politico filed a joint lawsuit against the Canadian AI firm Cohere this year over allegations of “systematic copyright and trademark infringement”.
While The New York Times launched a similar legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, which is still ongoing.
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