Perplexity to give media giants share of AI search revenue



Perplexity is launching a program to allow traditional media firms to collect a share of the revenue their articles generate for the AI platform – a move that looks like an attempt to fend off legal action from industry giants.

The Jeff Bezos-backed startup has set aside $42.5 million to be distributed among publishers in the program, according to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

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“AI is helping to create a better internet, but publishers still need to get paid,” Srinivas told Bloomberg

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas speaks during the Semafor 2024 World Economy Summit. AFP via Getty Images

“So we think this is actually the right solution, and we’re happy to make adjustments along the way.”

Perplexity plans to fund the program with revenue from Comet Plus, its new subscription tier for the web browser. Comet Plus will cost $5 a month and create a curated selection of content from publishers partnered with Perplexity, similar to Apple’s Apple News + offering, Srinivas said.

Publishers will reap 80% of Comet Plus revenue, with Perplexity taking the rest.

The media industry has been in an uproar over Google’s AI-generated summaries, which appear at the top of Chrome search results, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, claiming the bots have slashed web traffic to their sites.

Last week, a New York federal court denied Perplexity’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit from News Corp. – which owns The Post and Dow Jones – accusing the AI startup of ripping off its copyrighted content.

Forbes and Condé Nast have sent cease-and-desist letters to Perplexity, accusing it of using their content without permission.

Perplexity is working on its own AI-powered search engine as it hopes to rival Google’s Chrome. REUTERS

“We are confident AI companies will win all of these lawsuits,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer told Bloomberg. 

“We look forward to settling the law on this early on, so that everyone can benefit from AI.”

Perplexity did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity firm Cloudflare has also accused Perplexity of crawling the web and swiping data from websites by skirting around software blocks.

Perplexity has argued that its AI assistant is not actively crawling the web, but instead accessing websites at a user’s request, so it should have different rules to follow.

When people use AI agents to “go and read something on their behalf, that’s different from a web crawler,” which downloads information to train new AI models, Srinivas said.

Several AI giants, including OpenAI and Google, have clinched multimillion dollar deals with publishers to license and distribute their content. Ascannio – stock.adobe.com

Under the new program, publishers will earn money when their content receives traffic through Perplexity’s Comet web browser, appears in queries on Comet or is used to complete tasks by Comet’s AI assistant. 

Perplexity is working on its own AI-powered search engine as it hopes to rival Google’s Chrome – which the Justice Department is pushing to be sold off due to antitrust concerns.

Traditional media outlets that rely on web traffic and clicks to keep business afloat are operating with “an old model,” said Jessica Chan, head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity.

“We just want to create a new standard for compensation,” she told Bloomberg.

OpenAI’s artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT on a smartphone screen. Passionwith – stock.adobe.com

Several AI giants, including OpenAI and Google, have clinched multimillion dollar deals with publishers to license and distribute their content, but Perplexity is the first to offer up this revenue-share program.

It is unknown which publishers have already signed up, though Chan said Perplexity is in talks with its previous partners – a group that includes Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times and Fortune magazine.

Like many other AI startups, Perplexity has continued to raise massive amounts of funding – bringing in $100 million at an $18 billion valuation last month.

It recently offered to pay $34.5 billion to take over Google’s Chrome browser, in anticipation that the US government might force Google to sell the web tool to break up the company.

Srinivas said the offer is a legitimate one, with “well-funded people who want to back us.”

He said Perplexity has not yet heard back from Google.

Google did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.


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