CNN Sues Perplexity Over Verbatim AI Article Copies

CNN filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in a New York court on Thursday, accusing the startup of using its AI tools to create verbatim copies of the network's reporting. The complaint also claims that Perplexity delivers paywalled material to its users.

The company, which runs an AI answer engine and the Comet browser, reportedly failed to honor CNN's attempts to identify or stop its crawlers from scraping material. According to the filing, "Human beings report, research, write, edit, and create the content that Perplexity takes without permission or compensation."

One example cited in the suit alleges that feeding Perplexity's search feature with the headline of a specific story produced substantial verbatim excerpts from it. The article in question is titled "What’s next for Minneapolis? A shaky promise, mounting tensions and the fight for control."

The move places CNN among several other organizations targeting Perplexity with copyright claims, such as The New York Times, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, and News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal. Amazon and Reddit have also filed separate suits against the startup.

Negotiations for a licensing pact that would have let Perplexity's Comet Plus subscribers access CNN material beginning in October 2025 reportedly collapsed over disagreements on usage restrictions and other terms. CNN terminated those talks in November, then sent a letter ordering Perplexity to cease unauthorized exploitation of its articles and trademarks. The AI firm allegedly offered no reply.

The network is pursuing monetary damages together with a permanent injunction against the challenged practices. A Perplexity spokesperson, Jesse Dwyer, stated that "You can’t copyright facts."

Perplexity has drawn criticism from multiple legacy media outlets that view its summarization methods as a threat to original journalism.