Perplexity did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement emailed to WIRED, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson compared Perplexity unfavorably to OpenAI. “We applaud principles-based companies like OpenAI that understand that integrity and creativity are essential if we are to realize the potential of artificial intelligence,” the statement said. “Perplexity is not the only AI company abusing intellectual property, and it is not the only AI company we will act against vigorously and rigorously. We have made it clear that we prefer to court rather than sue, but for the sake of our journalists, writers and our company, we must challenge the content kleptocracy.”
OpenAI, however, faces its own accusations of trademark dilution. IN Modern York Times v. OpenAITimes claims that ChatGPT and Bing Chat will attribute fabricated quotes to the Times and accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of tarnishing their reputations by diluting their trademarks. In one example cited in the lawsuit, the Times claims that Bing Chat claimed that the Times was calling red wine (in moderation) a “heart-healthy” food when in fact it was not; The Los Angeles Times argues that its current reporting has undermined claims about the healthfulness of moderate drinking.
“Copying news articles to support surrogate, commercial generative AI products is unlawful, as we have made clear in our letters to Perplexity and in our litigation against Microsoft and OpenAI,” says NYT Director of External Communications Charlie Stadtlander. “We applaud this lawsuit filed by Dow Jones and the New York Post, which is an important step toward ensuring publishers’ content is protected from this type of misappropriation.”
If publishers prevail in arguing that hallucinations may violate trademark law, AI companies could face “tremendous difficulties,” according to Matthew Saga, a professor of law and artificial intelligence at Emory University.
“It’s impossible to guarantee that a language model won’t hallucinate,” says Sag. He argues that the way language models work by predicting words that sound correct in response to prompts is always a kind of hallucination – sometimes it just sounds more believable than others.
“We only call it a hallucination when it doesn’t match our reality, but the process is exactly the same whether we like the outcome or not.”