Lawsuits are emerging from a legal conflict between publishers and AI companies

POSTED ON Sep 12, 2025

Human lawyers will soon decide whether artificial intelligence (AI) companies are responsible for using copyrighted material properly.

Jad Tarifi, the former head of Google’s first generative AI team, recently argued that law degrees are becoming less relevant due to advancements in AI, which are rendering memorization-based education outdated.

Tarifi suggested that human skills will be more valuable for navigating an AI-driven future than deep technical knowledge or traditional degrees. However, the AI-driven future he envisions has not yet materialized.

As part of a broader legal battle over the use of copyrighted material to train large language models and generate responses for users, several major media organizations, including News Corp, Dow Jones, and The New York Post, have either filed or threatened legal action against Perplexity AI.

Recently, Perplexity AI unsuccessfully attempted to persuade a New York federal court to dismiss or transfer a lawsuit filed by these organizations concerning the alleged misuse of their articles to train its AI systems.

Additionally, a prominent Japanese newspaper company has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity.

The BBC has threatened legal action, claiming that Perplexity used its content without authorization and even reproduced material “verbatim.”

Furthermore, both Forbes and WIRED have criticized Perplexity for what they say is unauthorized use of their content.

This week, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, alleging that the company engaged in “massive copying” of copyrighted content and reproduced it verbatim without permission.

The complaint states that Perplexity uses undisclosed “stealth” crawlers to scrape websites, thereby evading protective measures and copying articles into its AI database without authorization.

The generated responses often closely mirror the works protected by copyright. Side-by-side comparisons indicate that Perplexity’s answers are nearly identical to Britannica articles, word for word.

Britannica asserts that it had over 1 billion website sessions in 2024 and relies on this traffic to generate revenue, which funds content creation.

In contrast, despite Perplexity’s 22 million users, publishers report minimal click-through rates from Perplexity’s citations. Britannica claims that “Perplexity’s answer engine” undermines its investment by diverting traffic from its websites with AI-generated summaries of its content.

Beyond copyright issues, the lawsuit also claims trademark violations arise when Perplexity generates AI “hallucinations”—false information attributed to trusted brands like Britannica and Merriam-Webster.

Encyclopedia Britannica’s lawsuit against Perplexity AI focuses on the company’s RAG database, which links large language models to external sources of information.

Britannica contends that all its content is included in the RAG database because Perplexity scraped copyrighted works from its websites.

The recent Perplexity lawsuit raises serious questions about content ownership, copyright, and ethical AI development. It sends a warning to product teams: How can we innovate with AI while staying responsible and avoiding legal risks?https://t.co/SKgKY66qB1 #EthicalAI pic.twitter.com/TS7Cqh67Ww

— Mind the Product (@MindtheProduct) November 19, 2024

Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster claim copyright infringement by AI startup Perplexity @jruss_jruss https://t.co/aBIKjhzzfH

— Courthouse News (@CourthouseNews) September 11, 2025

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster suing Perplexity for allegedly unlawfully copying their material for its answer engine

They say it "free rides" on their content by summarising their articles and taking traffic that would otherwise go to them https://t.co/CpCe2uVR5p

— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) September 12, 2025

Britannica files copyright lawsuit against Perplexity AI over online summaries https://t.co/kfDQ4OQLu0

— Crain's Chicago Business (@CrainsChicago) September 11, 2025