BBC threatens legal action against AI start-up Perplexity over content scraping

The BBC is threatening legal action against AI search engine Perplexity, alleging the start-up scraped and used its copyrighted content to train AI without permission. In a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, the British broadcaster demands the cessation of scraping, deletion of any retained BBC content, and a compensation proposal. This marks the BBC’s first move against AI firms over content misuse, amid rising concerns about intellectual property violations. The BBC claims content has been reproduced verbatim and harms its reputation, citing research showing factual inaccuracies in 17% of Perplexity’s AI-generated responses involving BBC material. It warns this undermines public trust, especially as the corporation is publicly funded and currently renegotiating its funding charter. Perplexity, currently finalizing a $14 billion funding round, rejects the accusations, stating it does not train foundational models and accusing the BBC of unjustly supporting Google's monopoly. The company, with 30 million users and revenue from subscriptions, has previously received similar legal notices from other major media outlets. It has signed revenue-sharing agreements with publishers like Time and Der Spiegel, but remains in legal disputes with others including News Corp subsidiaries. The BBC has recently begun registering its content with the U.S. Copyright Office to strengthen its legal position.