The New York Times Sued Perplexity for Allegedly Using Copyrighted Content and Generating False Attributions

On December 5, 2025, The New York Times sued Perplexity, alleging the company used copyrighted Times articles without permission to train its AI system and generated outputs that reproduced Times content or falsely attributed fabricated information to the newspaper. The suit claims the conduct harmed the Times's business and brand. Perplexity denies wrongdoing.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 6 Socioeconomic & Environmental
• Primary risk subdomain: 6.3 Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort

Perplexity's AI search engine reproduces and abridges original journalistic work, directly competing with publishers and devaluing the human effort and financial investment required to produce news.

Additional risk subdomains

• 3.1 False or misleading information: The AI system generates fabricated information ('hallucinations') and falsely attributes it to reputable news organizations, spreading misinformation.

Causal factors

• Entity: AI
• Intent: Unintentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The reputational and trademark risks are caused by the AI system generating hallucinations and abridged content post-deployment, which is an unintentional outcome of its synthesis goals.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The system is a chatbot and search engine that generates content, which falls under the transparency obligations of Limited Risk (Level 3) systems under the EU AI Act.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: Perplexity AI search engine (Perplexity AI)
• AI purpose: Question Answering; Content Search
• Behaviour type: Assistant
• Alleged developer: Perplexity AI
• Alleged deployer: Perplexity AI
• Alleged harmed parties: Writers, The New York Times, publishers, Journalistic integrity, Journalism, Epistemic integrity

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Financial

Reported: Yes, the reports describe financial threat and potential losses to the publishers' business models due to decreased traffic and ad revenue, though specific dollar amounts of losses are not quantified.

Directly caused: The reports do not specify a direct financial loss amount, but note that Perplexity's substitution of content decreases web traffic and ad revenue for the publishers.

Indirectly caused: The publishers incur legal fees to file and pursue the lawsuits against Perplexity AI.

Inferred additional harm: It is highly likely that the publishers have suffered millions of dollars in lost subscription and advertising revenue due to users bypassing their websites, alongside significant legal expenses.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the reports explicitly describe Perplexity AI generating fabricated or false information ('hallucinations') and falsely attributing them to the newspapers.

Directly caused: The AI system directly generated fabricated content and displayed it alongside the registered trademarks of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, misleading users.

Indirectly caused: This practice misleads the public and tarnishes the newspapers' reputations for truth and accuracy in reporting.

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that numerous users have read and believed these AI-generated hallucinations, leading to the spread of misinformation and erosion of trust in journalism.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1

Potential causes

Management

• Prioritizing Growth Over Compliance: Aggressive market strategy prioritized data acquisition over IP compliance.
• Dismissive Stance on IP Claims: Communications head dismissed lawsuits as standard resistance to new tech.
• Refusal to Compensate Publishers: Management failed to negotiate agreements with publishers for content use.

Technology

• AI Model Hallucinations: The model generated fabricated information falsely attributed to publishers.
• Verbatim Output Generation: Search engine generates outputs strikingly similar to original copyrighted text.
• Bypassing Web Blockers: AI crawlers bypassed web standards used by publishers to block scraping.

Data Inputs

• Unauthorized Web Scraping: Crawlers scraped millions of copyrighted articles without permission.
• Scraping Paywalled Material: The AI system scraped and copied content behind publisher paywalls.
• Lack of Source Verification: Insufficient filtering allowed scraping of protected trademarked data.

Human Factors

• User Misinterpretation: Users mistook AI hallucinations for actual newspaper reporting.
• Lack of Trust in AI Firms: Publishers distrust AI firms due to historical internet disruption of news.

Process and Methods

• No Licensing Agreements: Perplexity built commercial products without securing content licenses.
• Inadequate Content Filtering: Lack of mechanisms to filter out famous registered trademarks from outputs.
• Ignoring Cease and Desist: Startup continued using content despite receiving a cease and desist notice.

Regulatory Environment

• Ambiguous Fair Use Boundaries: AI companies exploit unclear legal limits of fair use for training data.
• Unresolved Copyright Standards: Lack of clear legislative guidelines on GenAI and copyright protection.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide clear, consistent details about the lawsuits filed by the New York Times and Chicago Tribune against Perplexity AI, detailing the specific claims of copyright infringement, trademark violation, and hallucinations. The legal and technical context is well-documented across multiple reputable news sources.
• Ambiguities identified: The exact volume of scraped articles and the specific frequency or nature of the hallucinations are not fully quantified in the reports.
• Alternative interpretations: The incident could be viewed purely as a commercial/copyright dispute rather than an AI safety issue, but the inclusion of AI hallucinations and trademark dilution directly links it to AI system limitations.

The lawsuits against Perplexity AI highlight minor national security concerns, primarily centered on economic challenges to the media sector and the degradation of the information ecosystem through AI hallucinations. The incident is a commercial and legal dispute manageable within existing judicial frameworks, posing no immediate threat to critical infrastructure or state sovereignty.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: United States
• Alleged perpetrator: Perplexity AI

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The legal and economic implications represent an ongoing structural concern rather than an immediate crisis.
• Autonomy: Full autonomy. The AI search engine retrieves, synthesizes, and presents information to users autonomously without real-time human intervention.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. While data scraping and AI hallucinations are known issues, the systematic commercial substitution of publisher content represents an evolved threat.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. The incident involves digital copyright and trademark disputes with no threat to physical systems, infrastructure, or human safety.
• Information security: Minor. AI-generated hallucinations falsely attributed to major newspapers degrade the information ecosystem and public trust, though it lacks hostile state-sponsored intent.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No threat to state authority, constitutional processes, or core government operations is indicated.
• Economic security: Minor. Presents economic challenges to the journalism sector's business model due to unauthorized scraping, but does not threaten strategic national industries or critical infrastructure.
• Societal stability: Negligible. The incident does not involve mass surveillance, systematic discrimination, or large-scale threats to civil liberties.