After Anthropic’s Billion-Dollar Settlement, Dictionaries Are Suing Perplexity AI

Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have filed lawsuits against Perplexity AI, an AI startup, alleging that the company has copied content from their publications and attributed fabricated answers to their brands. The lawsuits come after Anthropic, the parent company of Perplexity AI, recently reached a billion-dollar settlement with Anthropic over claims that the company had misused Anthropic's intellectual property. The dictionaries claim that Perplexity AI has been using their copyrighted material without permission and presenting it as its own content. They also allege that the startup has been attributing "hallucinated" answers to their brands, misleading users about the source of the information. The legal actions underscore the ongoing challenges around the use of copyrighted material in the rapidly evolving field of AI. As AI systems become more advanced, the issue of intellectual property rights and attribution is expected to continue to be a point of contention in the industry.