Perplexity Aims to Form Revenue-Sharing Partnerships With News Publishers

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas reportedly said Wednesday (Oct. 23) that he was surprised by a lawsuit filed Monday (Oct. 21) by two News Corp-owned publishers and that he was interested in a “proper commercial discussion.”

Speaking at WSJ Tech Live two days after Perplexity was sued by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) parent company Dow Jones and the New York Post — both owned by News Corp — Srinivas said Perplexity responded in June to a letter sent by Dow Jones representatives that outlined the publishers’ concerns about the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s use of their copyrighted content, WSJ reported Wednesday.

Dow Jones and the Post said in their lawsuit that Perplexity had not responded to the letter, according to the report.

Srinivas said Wednesday that Perplexity wants to form revenue-sharing partnerships with news publishers, per the report. He said that he is not interested in signing licensing agreements with publishers, instead suggesting that the company would share advertising revenue with publishers.

Perplexity will launch an advertising program in November, according to the report.

Srinivas also said that Perplexity could supply publishers with chatbots that would respond to users’ queries on the publishers’ websites, using their content to provide answers, per the report.

“I don’t think just licensing content is the only solution,” Srinivas said, according to the report. “Neither am I saying our publisher program is already there. I hope that more conversations will get us there.”

In the copyright infringement lawsuit filed Monday, Dow Jones and the Post allege that Perplexity’s AI search engine uses their copyrighted content to answer users’ questions, in some cases reproducing entire articles, and takes traffic that would otherwise have gone to the publishers’ sites.

“This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content publishers produce,” the publishers said in their complaint.

News Corp signed a content deal with another AI company, OpenAI, in May that will give OpenAI access to content from The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, the New York Post and other publications.