Jad Tarifi, the former head of Google's first generative AI team, recently argued that law degrees are becoming irrelevant due to the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), which is making memorization-based education outdated.
Tarifi suggested that human skills will be more valuable for navigating an AI-driven future than deep technical knowledge or traditional degrees.
However, the AI-driven future that Tarifi envisions is not yet a reality. Lawsuits have emerged as part of a broader legal battle between publishers and AI companies over the use of copyrighted material to train large language models and generate answers for users.
However, the AI-driven future that Tarifi envisions is not yet a reality.
In November 2024, a product community noted that the recent Perplexity lawsuit raises serious questions about content ownership, copyright, and the ethical development of AI. Mind the Product also pointed out that the lawsuit serves as a warning to product teams: How can we innovate with AI while remaining responsible and avoiding legal risks?
Recently, several major media organizations, including News Corp, Dow Jones, and The New York Post, have either sued or threatened legal action against Perplexity AI.
Perplexity AI recently failed to convince a New York federal court to dismiss or transfer a lawsuit brought by News Corp, Dow Jones, and the New York Post concerning the alleged misuse of their articles to train its AI systems.
Additionally, a major Japanese newspaper company has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity. The BBC has also threatened legal action, claiming that Perplexity used its content without authorization and has even "reproduced... verbatim" material. Furthermore, Forbes and WIRED have criticized Perplexity for what they allege is unauthorized use of their content.
This week, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, alleging that the company engaged in "massive copying" of copyrighted content and reproduced it verbatim without permission.
The complaint claims that Perplexity employs undisclosed "stealth" crawlers to scrape websites, evading protective measures and copying articles into its AI database without authorization.
The generated responses often closely mirror copyright-protected works. Side-by-side comparisons indicate that Perplexity's answers are nearly identical to Britannica articles, word for word.
Britannica asserts that it had over 1 billion website sessions in 2024 and relies on this traffic for revenue that funds content creation. In contrast, despite Perplexity's 22 million users, publishers report minimal click-through rates from Perplexity's citations.
Britannica alleges that "Perplexity's answer engine" undermines its investment by diverting traffic from its websites with AI-generated summaries of its content.
Beyond copyright issues, the lawsuit claims trademark violations arise when Perplexity generates AI "hallucinations"—false information attributed to trusted brands like Britannica and Merriam-Webster.
Encyclopedia Britannica's lawsuit against Perplexity AI focuses on the company's RAG database, which connects large language models to external sources of information. Britannica contends that all of its content is included in the RAG database because Perplexity scraped copyrighted works from its websites.