Forbes Considers Legal Action Against Perplexity AI Amid Content Scraping Controversy

Jun 21, 2024, 02:45 PM

Forbes is reportedly considering legal action against AI search startup Perplexity, alleging that the company's chatbot has stolen and republished original reporting without proper attribution. A Wired investigation has highlighted this issue, and experts in IP law suggest that Perplexity could be liable for claims including infringement and defamation. This controversy is part of a broader issue where multiple AI companies, including Perplexity, are accused of bypassing web standards to scrape publisher sites. Licensing firm Tollbit has claimed that several AI firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are ignoring robots.txt exclusions, which are intended to prevent unauthorized content scraping. Publishers such as The New York Times, Condé Nast, and the Guardian have blocked Perplexity bots from crawling their content, but frustrations are mounting as these AI engines allegedly find ways around these blocks. As AI technology advances, U.S. and international copyright laws are struggling to keep pace, raising legal and ethical questions about ownership and AI-generated content.