BBC and The New York Times Fight AI Startup Perplexity Over Unauthorized Use of Articles

Artificial intelligence and the media world are becoming increasingly embroiled in heated confrontations. The latest chapter in this dispute is unfolding between the prestigious media organizations BBC and The New York Times on one side and the AI startup Perplexity on the other.

BBC Threatens Legal Action

The BBC, the British public-service broadcaster, sent a legal threat to AI startup Perplexity in June 2025 in a letter addressed to the company's CEO, Aravind Srinivas. According to a Financial Times report, the BBC accuses Perplexity of using BBC content to train its AI models without permission. In the letter, the BBC demands that Perplexity immediately stop scraping its content, delete all existing copies used to train AI systems, and submit a "proposal for financial compensation" for the alleged misuse of intellectual property. If the company fails to meet these demands, the BBC is considering seeking a court injunction.

The British broadcaster confirmed the Financial Times report in a statement to Reuters, saying that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity and that links to BBC websites appeared in search results.

Allegations of Verbatim Copying

The BBC claims that Perplexity's AI responses often reproduce BBC materials verbatim, including entire passages and headlines, frequently without attribution or proper licensing. According to the BBC, this practice undermines its intellectual property rights and business model because readers may rely on AI-generated responses instead of visiting BBC platforms directly.

Perplexity Rejects the Allegations

Perplexity AI strongly rejected the BBC's claims, calling the complaint "manipulative and opportunistic." In a statement to Reuters, the company said that the BBC has a "fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet, and intellectual property law."

Perplexity argues that its AI models use publicly available information in a manner it considers consistent with legal standards and transparency. The company claims that the BBC is attempting to suppress competition and maintain the dominance of established technology giants in digital search.

Previous Conflicts with The New York Times

The BBC is not the only media organization to take on Perplexity. In October 2024, The New York Times sent Perplexity a "cease and desist" notice demanding that the company stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes.

In the letter dated October 2, 2024, The New York Times demanded that the AI company "immediately cease and desist from all current and future unauthorized access to and use of The Times's content." The newspaper also asked Perplexity to provide information about how it accesses the publisher's websites despite its prevention efforts.

Perplexity had previously assured the publisher that it would stop using "crawling" technology, but according to the letter, NYT content continues to appear in Perplexity. The company responded with the following statement: "We do not collect data to build foundation models, but rather index web pages and present factual content as citations to inform responses when a user asks a question."

Tensions Between Journalists and AI

This dispute highlights growing tensions within the industry between media organizations and AI companies. Since the launch of ChatGPT, publishers have warned about chatbots that can browse the internet, find information, and generate paragraph summaries for users.

As AI models increasingly rely on open web content for training, media companies fear systematic intellectual property infringement that could undermine their traffic and revenue. While AI companies often claim that their practices constitute "fair use," news organizations argue that verbatim reproductions threaten their rights and sustainability.

Other Disputes Involving Media Organizations

Perplexity has also faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, of plagiarizing their content. In response to these publishers' concerns, the company launched a revenue-sharing program intended to address some of the issues raised by publishers.

The New York Times is also fighting OpenAI, which it sued late last year, accusing it of using millions of newspaper articles without permission to train its AI chatbot. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that several AI companies were circumventing the web standard used by publishers to block the scraping of their data for use in generative AI systems.