Perplexity asks court to trim New York Times copyright case

By Blake Brittain

March 2 (Reuters) - Perplexity AI has asked a U.S. judge to dismiss a series of claims in lawsuits brought against it by the New York Times NYT.N and the Chicago Tribune, arguing that its artificial intelligence-powered search engine's responses to user queries do not violate the newspapers' rights.

Perplexity, which uses AI to scour websites and answer users' queries, said in a filing in New York federal court on Friday that it cannot be held liable when the results from its "Answer Engine" include the papers' content.

Perplexity's filing did not seek to dismiss the newspapers' main allegation that it misuses their articles to power its AI system, though the company said that claim would eventually "founder on bedrock principles of intellectual property law."

"Perplexity does not dispute that it copies The Times’s journalism from behind a paywall to deliver responses to their customers in real time," the newspapers' lawyer Steve Lieberman of Rothwell Figg Ernst & Manbeck said in a statement on Monday. "Nothing in its partial motion to dismiss justifies this theft."

Spokespeople for Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Other tech companies targeted with similar high-stakes lawsuits have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted material for AI training.

The newspapers sued Perplexity in December, arguing that the San Francisco-based AI startup's business model relied on unlawfully scraping and copying millions of their articles. The company is facing similar lawsuits from Reddit, Encyclopedia Britannica and Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post.

Perplexity on Friday asked to dismiss the newspapers' claims that its search results unlawfully reproduce copyrighted material from their articles. It said that it could not be held liable for alleged infringement from its users' searches.

The company also asked the court to dismiss allegations that its search results violated the Times' trademark rights.

The cases are Chicago Tribune Co v. Perplexity AI Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:25-cv-10094 and New York Times Co v. Perplexity AI Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:25-cv-10106.

For Perplexity: Joseph Wetzel, Andrew Gass, Sarang Damle, Brett Sandford and Cory Struble of Latham & Watkins; Bruce Baber, Katie McCarthy, Jackie Fugitt and Neel Chatterjee of King & Spalding

For the newspapers: Steven Lieberman, Jennifer Maisel, Robert Parker and Jenny Colgate of Rothwell Figg Ernst & Manbeck

Read more:

New York Times sues Perplexity AI for 'illegal' copying of content