Fortune strikes revenue sharing deal with Perplexity

Perplexity AI is launching revenue-sharing partnership with Fortune and other major publishers less than two months after some news outlets publicly accused the artificial intelligence startup of plagiarizing their stories, reports Shirin Ghaffary of Bloomberg News.

Ghaffary reports, “Publishers will receive a ‘double digit’ percentage of revenue from sponsored questions that appear below results in the search app, Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko told Bloomberg News. Perplexity doesn’t currently have advertising in its core product, but the startup plans to introduce it in the coming months.

“Founded in 2022, Perplexity has quickly grown from a small upstart to one of the most closely watched AI startups. The company, which is in talks to raise funding at a $3 billion valuation, gained popularity by offering a more real-time and research-focused set of responses to user queries than rival chatbots. But in recent weeks, Perplexity has been accused of plagiarism by news organizations such as Forbes and Condé Nast, the latter of which reportedly sent a cease and desist letter to the startup. Perplexity has disputed the allegations.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.