Condé Nast Alleges Plagiarism by AI Search Startup Perplexity, Reports Say
Condé Nast, the media giant behind popular magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue, has issued a cease-and-desist letter to AI search startup Perplexity. The letter, sent on Monday, orders Perplexity to halt the use of Condé Nast content in its AI-generated responses, alleging plagiarism.
The move makes Condé Nast the latest in a growing list of publishers to oppose unauthorized use of their content by AI companies, and comes a month after similar moves by Forbes. Perplexity and Condé Nast did not immediately respond to ReturnByte’s request for comment.
Perplexity, a $3 billion San Francisco-based startup backed by high-profile investors including Jeff Bezos’ family foundation and NVIDIA. . The controversy surrounding the company extends beyond copyright concerns.
A recent investigation by Wired revealed that the startup’s crawlers don’t respect the robots.txt file that allows website owners to prevent bots from hijacking their content. Last month, Amazon Web Services reportedly launched an investigation into whether the startup violated web scraping rules. Soon after, a Reuters report showed that Perplexity was just one of many AI companies that ignored the robots.txt file.
This practice has raised concerns about the ethical and legal implications of AI development and its impact on content creators and publishers. In response, Perplexity executives have talked about starting a revenue-sharing program with publishers, though it’s still unclear what the terms will be.
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch has warned that “many” media companies could face financial ruin before lawsuits against generative artificial intelligence companies are settled. Lynch has called on Congress to take “immediate action” by asking AI companies to compensate publishers for the use of their content and significant licensing deals in the future. Earlier this month, three senators introduced the COPIED Act, which aims to protect journalists, artists and songwriters from AI companies that use their content to train AI models.
