News: 0175296147

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Dow Jones and New York Post Sue AI Startup Perplexity, Alleging 'Massive' Copyright Infringement (variety.com)

(Monday October 21, 2024 @05:22PM (msmash) from the escalating-tensions dept.)


News Corp's Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have [1]sued Perplexity , a startup that calls itself an "AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity," alleging copyright infringement. From a report:

> "Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity's own words, allows users to 'Skip the Links' to original publishers' websites," the companies said in the federal lawsuit, filed Monday. "Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders. This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce."



[1] https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/news-corp-dow-jones-ny-post-sue-perplexity-copyright-infringement-1236184900/


Re: (Score:2)

by m00sh ( 2538182 )

> Facts aren't copyrightable. So the valuable content that news provides isn't copyrightable, it's only the valueless content that is.

If I get an AI to rewrite a book and redraw all the pictures but holding the same information then is that legal?

Then why haven't people created un-copyrightable textbooks from all that are out there?

Sued the wrong company? (Score:2)

by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 )

The text output of Perplexity is created by sending search result links to ChatGPT for summation. Perplexity is just the conductor of the orchestra. The tubas may be playing some newspaper's tune, but the output of the tubas was created by ChatGPT.

This lawsuit also seems wrong for another reason -- The reason I use Perplexity is because it provides the links and I do check the sources. So winding up as one of the authoritative sources for Perplexity leads to link-following -- they are arguing the oppo

Re: (Score:2)

by m00sh ( 2538182 )

They use their own LLM that is fine-tuned from Llama.

Paid subscribers have the option to use GPT4o for the text generation part from the sources.

ChatGPT model is not a publicly APIed model. Only OpenAI can use the model behind ChatGPT.

The Complaint (Score:3)

by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 )

[1]https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25244804-news-corp-vs-perplexity?responsive=1&title=1

Kill the gatekeepers (Score:2)

by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 )

They just want to be able to keep making money on old information instead of going out and creating new content. But I wonder if what they are really worried about is an AI pulling back the curtain and revealing to the world how much of their content is bullshit.

An elderly couple were flying to their Caribbean hideaway on a chartered plane
when a terrible storm forced them to land on an uninhabited island. When
several days passed without rescue, the couple and their pilot sank into a
despondent silence. Finally, the woman asked her husband if he had made his
usual pledge to the United Way Campaign.
"We're running out of food and water and you ask *that*?" her husband
barked. "If you really need to know, I not only pledged a half million but
I've already paid them half of it."
"You owe the U.W.C. a *quarter million*?" the woman exclaimed
euphorically. "Don't worry, Harry, they'll find us! They'll find us!"