Forbes has sent a letter to Perplexity's CEO Aravind Srinivas, accusing the AI search startup of "willful infringement" of copyright rights by stealing text and images, according to Axios.
In the letter, Forbes threatened to take legal action against the Jeff Bezos-backed startup for copying its content without proper attribution.
The incident stems from Perplexity creating AI-generated videos, articles, and podcasts on former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's AI drone venture, which Forbes originally reported.
"Our reporting on Eric Schmidt's stealth drone project was posted this AM by @perplexity_ai. It rips off most of our reporting. It cites us, and a few that reblogged us, as sources in the most easily ignored way possible," John Paczkowski, the executive editor of the tech & innovation desk of Forbes, posted on X/Twitter.
Perplexity's video "outranks all Forbes content on this topic within Google search," Lane emphasized.
Responding to the issue, the AI company's CEO argued that Perplexity is working on a new product feature with "rough edges" and is being modified based on feedback.
Srinivas added, "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."
However, the letter, sent by Forbes general counsel MariaRosa Cartolano, still requires Perplexity to remove the misleading articles and reimburse advertising revenue earned through the infringed content, along with "satisfactory evidence and written assurances" to confirm the removal of the content.
Moreover, the media company has asked Perplexity to provide "written representations and assurances" stating that it won't use Forbes copyright material in the future to generate articles or any other content.
Forbes said that it expects a reply from Perplexity regarding the matter within 10 days of receipt of the letter, highlighting that it reserves "all of its rights to take any action it deems necessary to protect its rights."
In a similar incident, the New York Times had sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, "over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies".
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