Overview
- The New York Times filed suit Friday in the Southern District of New York, alleging Perplexity unlawfully scraped and reproduced millions of Times stories, videos, podcasts and images.
- The Times also claims trademark violations under the Lanham Act, citing fabricated content presented with Times branding and detailed summaries generated by Perplexity’s Comet assistant.
- The Chicago Tribune sued Thursday in New York federal court, alleging Perplexity’s RAG systems and Comet browser used scraped Tribune reporting, bypassed its paywall, and diverted traffic with verbatim or near‑verbatim answers.
- Both publishers seek undisclosed damages and injunctions, including removal of their material and orders blocking further use in Perplexity’s products.
- Perplexity did not immediately comment, as the startup also faces separate lawsuits from Reddit and from Dow Jones and the New York Post.