Dispute over Content: Perplexity in the Plagiarism Focus

Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, avoided the controversial topic of plagiarism allegations during an interview with Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. These allegations revolve around claims that Perplexity copies content from other media sources. Dow Jones of News Corp and the New York Post have already initiated legal action, and the New York Times recently demanded that the startup cease such practices. Srinivas vigorously defended Perplexity by stating that the platform always cites its sources and does not claim ownership of the content. He drew parallels to the journalistic and academic practice of collecting and summarizing information for better user understanding. In a blog post, Perplexity responded to Dow Jones's lawsuit by claiming that some publishers would prefer to eliminate the technology altogether because they want publicly accessible facts to be owned by companies. However, the post remained silent on the allegations of massively reproducing content and directly competing with publishers for the same audience. A report by the plagiarism detection tool Copyleaks showed that a Perplexity summary had paraphrased 48% of the content of a Forbes article, while other cases showed moderate similarities and only a small degree of plagiarism. Srinivas acknowledged that Perplexity's citations might occasionally be inaccurate, but he emphasized efforts towards transparency and accuracy. He also repeatedly mentioned that Perplexity is working with media companies such as Time, Fortune, and Der Spiegel in a revenue-sharing program. Dow Jones was also considered as a partner but chose otherwise and, in Srinivas's view, misinformed public opinion. He also refuted claims that users were using Perplexity to summarize paywalled articles. Instead, he suggested that the platform is popular for financial research, despite occasional AI errors.