The Chicago Tribune has filed a federal lawsuit against AI search company Perplexity, alleging that the platform reproduces its copyrighted journalism without permission, including through verbatim output and the use of scraped content in AI retrieval systems.
Allegations over use of Tribune content
According to the complaint, which was filed on Thursday in federal court in New York and reviewed by TechCrunch, the Tribune said its legal team contacted Perplexity in mid-October to ask whether the AI search engine was using its content.
Perplexity’s lawyers responded that the company does not train its models on the Tribune’s work but “may receive non-verbatim factual summaries,” the lawsuit states. The Tribune disputes that claim and alleges that Perplexity is delivering its content verbatim.
Claims involving retrieval systems and paywall access
The lawsuit also focuses on Perplexity’s use of Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG, a method intended to reduce incorrect outputs by grounding responses in verified external sources.
The Tribune alleges that its articles are being scraped without permission and used within Perplexity’s RAG systems. It further claims that Perplexity’s Comet browser bypasses the newspaper’s paywall to generate detailed article summaries for users.
Broader legal backdrop involving publishers and AI firms
The Chicago Tribune is part of a group of 17 news organizations owned by MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing that sued OpenAI and Microsoft in April over the use of their content for model training. That case remains ongoing.
In November, nine additional publishers from the same group filed another lawsuit against OpenAI and its cloud provider.
The Tribune’s lawsuit against Perplexity arrives as courts are also being asked to assess the legal exposure tied not only to AI model training, but to retrieval-based systems that reference external content in real time.
Other legal actions involving Perplexity
Perplexity did not immediately respond to the Tribune’s report on the lawsuit or to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The company is already facing other legal challenges. Reddit filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in October. Dow Jones has also initiated legal action. Last month, Amazon sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter over issues related to its AI browser’s shopping features.
Featured image credits: Flickr
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