The New York Times Takes Legal Action Against AI Startup Perplexity For Allegedly Using Content Without Permission – AfroTech
The New York Times reported on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, that it has filed a lawsuit against AI start-up Perplexity for alleged copyright infringement.
According to the media company, Perplexity continues to use its content despite multiple requests over the past 18 months to stop until an agreement can be reached. Founded in 2022 by former OpenAI engineer Aravind Srinivas and other entrepreneurs, Perplexity is a free AI-powered answer engine that aims to provide “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question,” according to its website.
Filed in a New York federal court, the suit claims Perplexity’s search engine pulls large portions of information from The Times’ website or database to generate responses for users, which goes beyond fair use by offering content that directly competes with the newspaper.
“Perplexity provides commercial products to its own users that substitute for The Times, without permission or remuneration,” the suit said, per The Times.
The Times also accuses Perplexity of damaging its brand by allowing its search engine to fabricate information, called “hallucinations,” and falsely attributes it to The Times.
Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the outlet reports.
Lawsuits Mount Against AI Firms Over Copyright Violations
The Times’ lawsuit is the latest in a growing wave of legal challenges against AI companies over copyright violations with The Times putting that number at over 40 cases. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, record labels, artists, and media companies have raised concerns that some AI tools use their content without proper attribution or payment.
The Times filed a separate lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 over alleged intellectual property theft, AFROTECH™ reported.
In May 2025, The Times reached a multi-year agreement with Amazon to license its content for use in the company’s AI models, ensuring the media outlet receives compensation for its intellectual property.
Marking a first for major entertainment studios, Disney and NBCUniversal have also teamed up in a lawsuit against Midjourney. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the lawsuit, filed on June 11, 2025, claims the AI platform produced “hundreds, if not thousands,” of unauthorized images featuring characters from their franchises.
Disney and NBCU accused Midjourney’s “bootlegging business model” of posing a broader threat to the U.S. film industry, which supports millions of jobs and contributes over $260 billion to the economy.
“By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and then distributing images (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters — without investing a penny in their creation — Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the lawsuit states, as AFROTECH™ noted.
