Condé Nast reportedly accuses AI startup Perplexity of plagiarism

The global mass media company Condé Nast has allegedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI company Perplexity following concerns around plagiarism.

The company owns numerous large magazines and publishers, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, GQ, and more.

According to The Information, who say they obtained a copy of the letter, the cease-and-desist has demanded the AI startup stop using content from their publications in its search results.

Perplexity is a two-year-old company that is essentially an AI-enhanced search tool. It combines elements from the likes of ChatGPT and Google Search. The advanced chatbot can answer queries and integrate recent articles within its responses.

It does this by indexing the web daily so that it can return information about the latest news, sports scores, and other commonly searched topics. When delivering the information, it includes a list of references and provides footnotes.

Neither Condé Nast nor Perplexity have spoken publicly about the rumored letter.

This move by Condé Nast follows Forbes which was also reported to have sent a letter to the CEO of the start-up in June accusing them of stealing text and images in a ‘willful infringement’ of their copyright rights.

Forbes’ editor and chief content officer, Randall Lane, charged Perplexity with committing “cynical theft,” accusing the company of creating “knockoff stories” that contain “eerily similar wording” and “entirely lifted fragments” from its articles.

The Executive Editor of Tech and Innovation at Forbes, John Paczkowski, even took to X (formerly Twitter) to say how the AI chatbot “rips off most of our reporting.”

Our reporting on Eric Schmidt’s stealth drone project was posted this AM by @perplexity_ai . It rips off most of our reporting. It cites us, and a few that reblogged us, as sources in the most easily ignored way possible. Note the views. #zeroclick https://t.co/qZamti9E83 pic.twitter.com/8z2AsyHjgM

— John Paczkowski (@JohnPaczkowski) June 7, 2024

The Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas then responded by saying the feature ‘Perplexity Pages’ has “rough edges” and is being improved on with more feedback.

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Thanks for flagging this. The screenshot you shared is of a new product feature we released two weeks ago called "Perplexity Pages". It has rough edges, and we are improving it with more feedback. The core Perplexity product has, from day one, had appropriate source attribution… pic.twitter.com/8GGLFUQGWy

— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) June 7, 2024

He writes how the tool has “from day one, had appropriate source attribution in the most prominent way, unlike other chatbots on the market like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot…”

Featured Image: Via Flickr

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