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CNN Sues Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

By  |  May 28, 2026
CNN Sues Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

CNN has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence search company Perplexity in federal court in New York, accusing the startup of unlawfully using and distributing the network’s copyrighted content, according to Reuters.

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    The complaint alleges that Perplexity copied thousands of CNN articles, videos and images in order to develop and operate its AI-powered products. CNN claims the company then generated competing material that was “identical or substantially similar” to its original reporting, per Reuters.

    The lawsuit adds to a growing wave of legal disputes between media organizations and AI companies over the use of copyrighted content to train large language models and power chatbot responses. Since the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, publishers, authors and news outlets have raised concerns that their work is being repurposed without authorization or compensation.

    CNN’s case is among dozens of major copyright lawsuits filed in the United States against technology companies accused of using protected material to train AI systems. The legal battles have increasingly centered on questions of ownership, licensing and payment for content used in generative AI products.

    Per Reuters, Anthropic became the first AI company to settle one of the major copyright disputes last year, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to resolve a class action lawsuit brought by a group of authors.

    Read more: Reddit Sues Perplexity AI and Data Firms Over Alleged Unauthorized Scraping

    The lawsuit also represents the latest legal challenge facing Perplexity, whose AI search platform scans websites to provide users with direct answers to questions. Critics have accused the company of scraping data and reproducing copyrighted material without proper authorization.

    Perplexity is already facing separate lawsuits from several organizations, including The New York Times, Reddit and Dow Jones, according to Reuters.

    At the same time, some news publishers have chosen to strike licensing agreements and partnership deals with major technology and AI firms. Those arrangements are intended to give AI models access to verified news sources while compensating publishers and directing users back to original reporting, per Reuters.

    Source: Reuters