Perplexity AI vs. CNN: Copyright Dispute

CNN Sues Perplexity AI for Copyright Infringement

The television network CNN has recently filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, a company specializing in AI-based search engines. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a New York district court, accuses Perplexity of illegally copying and distributing over 17,000 articles, videos, images, and other content published by CNN. This litigation was reported by Brian Stelter for CNN. While this is CNN's first lawsuit against an AI company, the network is not alone in this endeavor. Other publishers, such as the New York Times and News Corp, have also sued the San Francisco-based startup for similar reasons. CNN had attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with Perplexity, but those discussions did not come to fruition. In contrast, last year, CNN reached a content licensing agreement with Meta, where the tech giant compensates for the use of its reporting and content in response to queries on Meta's AI products.

AI products, such as those developed by Perplexity, regularly scour news publications and websites to provide real-time answers to user questions. This practice has contributed to a significant decline in traffic and revenue for original sources.

Perplexity AI's Defense

In response to the lawsuit, Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's communications director, stated in a press release that "you cannot copyright facts." This statement is based on clarifications from the U.S. Copyright Office, which states that "copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these elements are expressed." CNN responded by asserting that a company valued at tens of billions of dollars should not "steal from the entities that create the original content that Perplexity exploits" and that "business operators can and should pay to use it." A representative from Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

AI-Related Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

Perplexity is not alone in this situation. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are also facing similar lawsuits from news publishers and media giants. More than 100 of these lawsuits have been filed. Michael Goodyear, an associate professor at New York Law School, explained that different conclusions have been drawn regarding whether training AI models on copyrighted data constitutes fair use. Considerations include how the training occurs, what the AI outputs contain, and whether there is competitive harm to copyright holders. "No appellate court has yet ruled on the viability of these copyright infringement claims against AI companies," Goodyear stated. In CNN's case, he indicated that Perplexity is correct in saying that facts are not protected by copyright, but the way CNN presents those facts could be. "Even short news articles could generally benefit from copyright protection under the low threshold of originality required," Goodyear added. "The question becomes whether the thousands of instances of infringement described by CNN involve copying entire paragraphs verbatim, or whether they paraphrase or merely copy unprotected facts."

Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, filed a complaint against OpenAI in 2025, alleging that the latter infringed Ziff Davis's copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.

Licensing Agreements for AI

As the decline in website traffic has drained billions in revenue for publishers and triggered massive layoffs in media, AI companies are exacerbating the crisis. According to a new report from the Open Markets Institute, over the past six months, the rate of AI bots bypassing paywalls and blocks has nearly quadrupled, rising from 3.3% to 12.9%. This is partly why a number of publishers have signed content licensing agreements with tech companies to monetize the content used to train AI systems. A possible outcome for Perplexity could be to renegotiate a licensing agreement with CNN. Even if Perplexity has valid legal arguments, a licensing agreement could shift the situation from unauthorized scraping to a formalized content partnership.

However, the Open Markets Institute report indicates that in terms of content licensing for AI, news and content creators find themselves caught in a double bind. The same tech giants whose AI tools deprive websites of human traffic are now the ones controlling the licensing agreements meant to replace lost advertising revenue.