CNN sues Perplexity for allegedly copying 17,000 stories: A deep-dive into the legal dispute

The lawsuit comes as another major copyright fight unfolds in the AI industry. Earlier this month, publishers including Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan and McGraw Hill sued Meta Platforms in Manhattan federal court, alleging the tech giant illegally used books and journal articles to train its AI model Llama.

The publishers claimed Meta pirated millions of copyrighted works without permission. Meta denied wrongdoing, saying, “AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use. We will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

What CNN is accusing Perplexity of

CNN’s lawsuit alleges that Perplexity violated federal copyright law by copying more than 17,000 CNN stories, videos, images and other content to build and operate its AI-powered search tools. According to the complaint, Perplexity “unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes CNN’s content” from CNN’s own platforms as well as third-party websites.

Perplexity operates as what it calls an “answer engine.” Instead of giving users a list of links like a traditional search engine, the company uses AI models to scan online content and generate direct conversational answers to questions. CNN argues that this system relies heavily on journalism created by publishers but does not compensate them for the use of their reporting.

The lawsuit claims that when users ask Perplexity questions about breaking news or current events, the company’s AI tools may generate responses directly based on CNN’s reporting without sending users to CNN’s website. CNN argues that this deprives publishers of advertising revenue, subscriptions and audience traffic while allowing AI firms to build billion-dollar businesses using journalism they did not pay to produce.

Trademark allegations against Perplexity

Along with copyright infringement claims, CNN has also accused Perplexity of trademark violations. According to the lawsuit, Perplexity falsely suggested that users could access CNN’s premium content through its “Comet Plus” subscription tier despite there being no licensing partnership between the two companies.

CNN said Perplexity’s actions could mislead consumers into believing that CNN approved, sponsored or partnered with the AI company. The lawsuit also alleges that Perplexity is attempting to benefit from public trust in the CNN brand.

What CNN wants from the court

CNN has asked the court to award statutory damages and order Perplexity to stop using its content and trademarks. The company has not publicly specified the amount of damages it is seeking, but copyright law in the United States allows significant financial penalties, especially if infringement is found to be intentional.

CNN also made clear that it is not opposed to artificial intelligence itself. In a public statement, the network said it “actively embraces the opportunities AI creates” and already has “multiple commercial partnerships, active agreements, and ongoing discussions with responsible industry players.”

CNN pointed to its earlier partnership with Meta Platforms as an example of a licensing arrangement it considers acceptable. A CNN spokesperson said, “The public relies on high-quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, and this journalism is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce.” The spokesperson added that companies using this journalism “can and must pay to use it.”

CNN further stated that it would prefer “sensible licensing arrangements” with AI operators, but argued that if companies refuse such agreements, “they will have to pay through legal damages.” The statement concluded: “There is no free option.”

Perplexity’s response so far

Perplexity has not publicly responded to CNN’s lawsuit yet. However, in earlier legal disputes with publishers including The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, the company defended its technology and criticised attempts to restrict AI systems.

In previous court filings, Perplexity argued that efforts to stop AI tools from using online content reflected an outdated conflict between media companies and technology firms.

The CNN lawsuit also states that the two sides had discussions before the case was filed. According to the complaint, Perplexity knew it was not permitted to use CNN’s content or trademarks without authorisation, but negotiations did not lead to a licensing agreement.

A growing legal battle between publishers and AI firms

CNN’s lawsuit is part of a much larger wave of legal action against AI companies. Perplexity is already facing lawsuits from publishers and platforms including The New York Times, Reddit, Dow Jones, News Corp, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Japanese media company Yomiuri Shimbun.

The central issue across these cases is whether AI companies can legally use copyrighted material to train models and generate answers without paying the original creators.

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, publishers, writers and artists have increasingly raised concerns that their work is being used to train AI systems without permission. Media companies argue that chatbot-style AI tools reduce traffic to original websites because users receive summarized answers directly from the AI system instead of clicking through to the source article.

Publishers say this creates long-term financial damage by reducing advertising revenue and subscription growth. At the same time, AI companies argue that using publicly available material to train systems can qualify as “fair use” under US copyright law because the output is transformative.

The courts are still divided on the issue. Some judges have signaled that AI training could qualify as fair use, while others have shown willingness to let copyright claims move forward.

One of the biggest settlements so far came last year when Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, agreed to pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over alleged piracy claims linked to AI training.