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3w ago

Perplexity Launches Comet Plus, Pledging $42.5 Million and 80/20 Payouts to Publishers

The rollout answers intensifying publisher lawsuits over alleged copying and misattribution.

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Perplexity is facing a wave of copyright lawsuits from publishers around the world.
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Overview

  • Perplexity set aside a $42.5 million pool to compensate outlets when their work is surfaced in Comet search results, sends traffic via the Comet browser, or is used by the AI assistant to complete tasks.
  • Payments are funded by Comet Plus, a new $5 monthly plan that directs 80% of revenue to participating publishers, with 20% retained by Perplexity.
  • Nikkei and Asahi filed suits in Tokyo seeking ¥2.2 billion each, alleging Perplexity copied and stored their articles, bypassed technical safeguards, and produced inaccurate answers attributed to their reporting.
  • Legal pressures persist elsewhere, including a News Corp case in New York that survived a dismissal bid and separate complaints from Cloudflare that Perplexity skirted website blocks.
  • Perplexity disputes the allegations, saying its agent accesses sites at a user’s request rather than crawling, expresses confidence about legal outcomes, and points to prior revenue-share deals with outlets such as Time, the Los Angeles Times, and Fortune.