The New York Times And Chicago Tribune sued Perplexity last week, the latest in a series of publishers suing AI companies in an effort to set limits around new information-powered technology.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The New York Times and Chicago Tribune sued artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI. These were separate cases last week for copyright infringement. And it’s the latest in a wave of lawsuits against AI companies by media companies trying to protect their business models. To explain all this, we have NPR’s John Ruwitch on the line. Hi John.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so explain what exactly is at the heart of these latest cases.
RUWITCH: Yes, it’s really about who can reuse content published on the Internet by news companies and under what circumstances. Perplexity is one of the most popular AI chatbots, like Google’s ChatGPT or Gemini. These chatbots are trained on data extracted from the Internet. And so you ask it a question, it gives you an AI-based answer. In a nutshell, what these news companies are arguing is that they are accusing Perplexity of using their content without permission to create some of these responses. Steven Lieberman is an attorney at Rothwell Figg. He represents the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He says Perplexity should pay for content, just like other types of companies have done for years and years.
STEVEN LIEBERMAN: So, for example, on television, one of the most popular early shows was CBS’s “I Love Lucy.” But CBS didn’t take the content of “I Love Lucy” without paying Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. They paid them for the content.
CHANG: And how did Perplexity react to that?
RUWITCH: Well, Perplexity kind of ignored that in a statement they sent to reporters. The company’s communications manager, Jesse Dwyer, said publishers have been pursuing new technology companies for a hundred years. And I quote: “Luckily it never worked, otherwise we would talk about it by telegraph.”
CHANG: (Laughter).
RUWITCH: It was pretty sarcastic.
CHANG: Yeah (laughter).
RUWITCH: But the crux of these disputes, yeah, the crux is generally, you know, this question of what is considered or what should be considered fair use and whether or not AI changes things. Fair use is that legal concept that allows others to use copyrighted works without the owner’s consent, such as for educational or research purposes, but under certain conditions. So we have to transform it into something new.
CHANG: That’s right.
RUWITCH: I talked to Sarah Kreps about it. She directs the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. She says AI companies are actually testing the limits of fair use by vacuuming up all the data and content they can get their hands on.
SARAH KREPS: With new technology, those limits aren’t entirely clear. So it’s no surprise that they’re pushing the limits and seeing what those limits are.
RUWITCH: That’s because, fundamentally, competition in AI is fierce. AI models are built on data. The more data, the better the model will be.
CHANG: OK, well, John, with all this talk about AI, I feel like we keep hearing that AI is a threat to this or it’s going to destroy that. So just explain here, very specifically, why is AI so threatening to these media companies?
RUWITCH: For media companies, it’s almost existential, right? Their job is to create news content and sell it. And analysts say dark lessons from the past are helping to animate some of these cases. You will recall, Ailsa, that the Internet has radically changed the news industry, right?
CHANG: Oh, yeah.
RUWITCH: Put many newspapers out of business by cutting advertising revenue, giving customers new ways to get the news for free. News organizations don’t want something like this to happen again. Klaudia Jazwinska is a researcher and journalist at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.
KLAUDIA JAZWINSKA: I think a lot of editors feel like they’ve been burned in the past. And they don’t really feel like they have a reason to trust AI companies or technology platforms.
RUWITCH: She and her colleagues launched an online tracker last week. And they have documented about 20 lawsuits so far — she says there could be more — and more than a hundred deals in which media companies are paid for their content through licensing or revenue-sharing deals.
CHANG: Will we see more deals, do you think?
RUWITCH: We could do it. Steven Lieberman, the newspapers’ lawyer, says that’s where things should be headed. Both parties ultimately need to sit down and work out licensing deals. But this, you know, will take time. The cases are making their way through the courts. The original, the first one, was launched about two years ago. It was the New York Times versus OpenAI. And this matter has no end in sight at the moment.
CHANG: That’s NPR’s John Ruwitch in Silicon Valley. Thank you, John.
RUWITCH: You’re welcome.
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