The Chicago Tribune filed a lawsuit in opposition to AI search engine Perplexity on Thursday alleging copyright infringement. The swimsuit, seen by TechCrunch, was filed in a federal court docket in New York.
The Tribune alleges that its attorneys contacted Perplexity in mid-October asking if the AI search engine was utilizing its content material, in line with the criticism. Perplexity’s attorneys replied it didn’t prepare fashions with the Tribune’s work, however that it “could obtain non-verbatim factual summaries,” the lawsuit claims.
The Tribune’s attorneys, nevertheless, argue that Perplexity is delivering Tribune content material verbatim.
Apparently, the newspaper’s attorneys are additionally calling out Perplexity’s Retrieval Augmented Era (RAG) as a offender. RAG is a technique used to restrict hallucinations by having the mannequin solely use an correct or verified information supply. The Tribune argues that Perplexity is utilizing the newspaper’s content material in its RAG techniques, scraped with out permission. Plus, it alleges the Perplexity’s Comet browser is bypassing the paper’s paywall to ship detailed summaries of these articles.
The Tribune is one among 17 information publications from MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing that sued OpenAI and Microsoft over mannequin coaching materials in April. That swimsuit is ongoing. One other 9 from these publishers sued the mannequin maker and its cloud supplier in November, too.
Whereas creators have filed many lawsuits in opposition to mannequin makers over utilizing their work for mannequin coaching, we’ll need to see if the courts weigh in concerning the authorized liabilities of RAG as nicely.
Perplexity didn’t instantly reply to the Chicago Tribune’s story about its personal lawsuit, nor to TechCrunch’s request for remark. Perplexity is going through different such fits. Reddit filed one in October. Dow Jones can be suing. Final month, whereas Amazon didn’t sue, it did threaten to by sending a stop and desist letter over AI browser purchasing.
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