CNN Sues Perplexity Over Unauthorized Scraping of Journalism
Key Takeaways
- ▸CNN accuses Perplexity of scraping its journalism and distributing paywalled content without permission or compensation
- ▸The lawsuit stems from broken licensing negotiations and a ignored cease-and-desist letter following failed deal discussions in late 2025
- ▸Perplexity is now defending against lawsuits from at least six major media and technology companies over copyright infringement
Summary
CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in New York, accusing the AI search startup of scraping its journalism without permission and providing users with content that should be behind CNN's paywall. The lawsuit alleges that Perplexity's AI tools generate "substantial" verbatim portions of CNN articles and that the company has deliberately ignored CNN's attempts to block its crawlers from accessing the content.
The legal action follows failed licensing negotiations between the two companies. CNN and Perplexity discussed a content-sharing arrangement through Perplexity's Comet Plus subscription in October 2025, but talks collapsed over disagreements about how Perplexity could use CNN's journalism in its AI-generated answers. After CNN terminated the potential deal in November, the news organization sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding Perplexity stop using its content and trademarks—a request that went unanswered.
Perplexity now faces mounting legal pressure, with at least six major companies including The New York Times, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, News Corp, Amazon, and Reddit pursuing copyright infringement lawsuits. Perplexity has defended its practices, with a company spokesperson asserting that "You can't copyright facts," suggesting the company views its content use as falling within fair use protections.
- Perplexity claims its use of content constitutes fair use, arguing that factual information cannot be copyrighted
