Archived: Forbes confronts Perplexity with legal threat over copyright infringement

Forbes sent a letter to the CEO of AI search startup Perplexity accusing the company of stealing text and images in a "willful infringement" of Forbes' copyright rights, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: Publishers fighting to protect their intellectual property are stuck in a game of whack-a-mole as they confront not just the biggest AI companies, like OpenAI or Google, but also smaller AI startups.

Catch up quick: Forbes general counsel MariaRosa Cartolano sent the letter days after Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane accused Perplexity AI's chatbot of ripping off Forbes' reporting without attribution.

• The chatbot tried to give credibility to the Forbes story it presented by citing other "sourced" reports that were actually just aggregated stories of Forbes' original report.
• Perplexity then sent a push notification to its subscribers of its version of the story and published an AI-generated podcast, which was then turned into a YouTube video, about the story.

That video, Lane said, "outranks all Forbes content on this topic within Google search." Lane and the author of the original Forbes article have both highlighted ways the Perplexity AI chatbot failed to appropriately cite Forbes.

The other side: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas tried to defend the company's practices, writing to the Forbes journalist on X that the incident was part of a new product feature that has "rough edges" and is being improved "with more feedback."

• He conceded to the journalist that "we agree with the feedback you've shared that it should be a lot easier to find the contributing sources and highlight them more prominently."

Perplexity has raised $165 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, per Bloomberg. It's backed by heavy hitters in the tech industry, including Jeff Bezos, Google's Jeff Dean and former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Zoom in: The letter, dated last Thursday, demands that Perplexity remove the misleading source articles, reimburse Forbes for all advertising revenues Perplexity earned via the infringement, and provide "satisfactory evidence and written assurances" that it has removed the infringing articles.

• It also demanded that Perplexity provide "written representations and assurances" confirming that it won't use any of Forbes' intellectual property or content to generate and publish AI chatbot articles and that it won't infringe on Forbes copyrights in the future.
• Forbes said "it looks forward to a reply" to its letter within 10 days of receipt. It threatened to reserve "all of its rights to take any action it deems necessary to protect its rights."

The big picture: News outlets are taking different approaches to defend their copyright protections in the AI era.

• While the New York Times and a few regional newspapers have sued OpenAI, many other outlets — including the Financial Times, Axel Springer, the Associated Press, Vox Media and The Atlantic — have brokered licensing deals.

Go deeper: News industry divides over AI