The owners of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity in New York federal court. The case could set important precedents for similar lawsuits against AI companies in the music industry.

Key allegations in the lawsuit:

• Perplexity allegedly copied hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles without permission for its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) database
• The company is accused of reproducing full or partial articles verbatim, including paywall-protected content
• Additional unauthorized copies are allegedly made to preserve AI-generated outputs
• The platform is claimed to produce false attributions and "hallucinated" content

The plaintiffs previously attempted to discuss licensing options with Perplexity in July 2024 but received no response. The company, backed by Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, is reportedly seeking $500 million in funding at an $8 billion valuation.

The lawsuit seeks:

• Substantial damages
• An order to stop unauthorized copying
• Destruction of databases containing protected materials

This case follows similar legal actions against other AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, but uniquely targets multiple stages of alleged infringement in the AI content generation process.

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