The New York Times has ordered the generative AI company Perplexity, funded by Jeff Bezos, to stop accessing and using its content in AI-generated summaries and other outputs.
The letter reviewed by Wall Street Journal claims that the Perplexity has "unjustly enriched" it through the use of "expressive, carefully written and researched journalism without a license." This move violates copyright laws.

This is one of the latest battles in a series that includes both the Times and AI companies. The reason is that the newspaper has a lawsuit pending against OpenAI, alleging that the company trained ChatGPT on its content without permission.

Other publishers have also accused Perplexity of web scraping without permission.

A recent study from Copyleaks found Perplexity could summarize paywalled content from various publishers.

As the backlash reached fever pitch, Perplexity launched an ad-revenue share programme targeted towards paying publishers back.

CEO Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity told WSJ that the startup is eager to work with the NYT by claiming: "We have no interest in being anyone's antagonist here."