WSJ owner sues AI company Perplexity

Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, has hit Perplexity AI Inc. with a lawsuit accusing it of copying “massive amounts” of the News Corp. units’ content without permission.

Here is a statement from News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson:

Perplexity perpetuates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp. The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source. Perplexity proudly states that uses can “skip the links” — apparently, Perplexity wants to skip the check.
We applaud principled companies like OpenAI, which understands that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realise the potential of Artificial Intelligence. Perplexity is now the only AI company abusing intellectual property and it is not the only AI company that we will pursue with vigor and rigor. We have made it clear that we would rather woo than sue, but, for the sake of our journalists, our writers and our company, we must challenge content kleptocracy.

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.