Perplexity AI finds itself in a complicated situation. While its representatives try to convince media houses of their trustworthiness at industry events, the company faces a growing wave of lawsuits for copyright infringement. The latest legal action against the startup was taken by CNN, joining a list that includes The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the BBC.
At a recent IAB Tech Lab conference, Jessica Chan, Head of Publisher Partnerships at Perplexity, repeatedly invoked values such as transparency and shared value. She admitted that relations between AI firms and content creators are strained.
“We know that AI companies haven’t always earned the trust of publishers. Rebuilding it requires consistency and transparency, which is a direction we are committed to,” Chan stated.
However, the key issue remains the financial model. Although Perplexity emphasizes citing sources and quotations, for publishers, this is not an adequate substitute for lost revenues. The citation-based model, according to media outlets, encourages users to remain within the AI interface rather than clicking through to original websites, which reduces their advertising revenue. Unlike companies such as OpenAI or Meta, Perplexity does not yet use direct “pay-per-crawl” licensing agreements.
Publishers remain skeptical of these efforts. One conference participant, speaking anonymously, stated that given the company's past behavior and ongoing lawsuits, it is difficult to take new assurances seriously. Among the problematic issues are earlier accusations that Perplexity bots ignore instructions in robots.txt files, which websites use to prevent unauthorized content scraping.
The company is trying to appease the situation with a new “Premium Sources” program, which integrates expert and peer-reviewed studies into its Perplexity Computer assistant. Chan indicated that news content should be incorporated into this area later this year. Experiments are also underway with tools that would automatically package editorial content into concepts for advertising campaigns, shortening the preparation time for sales strategies from days to minutes.
While some partners involved in existing pilot programs believe that the coexistence of AI and journalism is necessary for the survival of both sides, most of the market is waiting for more concrete steps. According to legal experts, Perplexity is more vulnerable than traditional search engines precisely because its answers serve as a direct replacement for visiting a website, rather than as a pointer that generates traffic.