Perplexity sued by CNN over alleged AI-powered content scraping

The legal fight between news publishers and AI companies just got bigger.

CNN filed a lawsuit against Perplexity on Thursday in federal court in New York, accusing the AI search startup of copying and redistributing its copyrighted reporting without permission. The complaint alleges that Perplexity used thousands of CNN articles, videos, and images to train and power its AI products, and then served users content that was “identical or substantially similar” to CNN’s original reporting.

The case adds CNN to a growing list of publishers taking AI firms to court over how their models collect, process, and reproduce online content. The outcome could shape how AI search engines interact with journalism across the internet.

Perplexity, which has gained traction as an AI-powered answer engine that summarizes information from across the web, pushed back against the allegations.

“You can’t copyright facts,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in response to the lawsuit.

CNN sues Perplexity for copyright infringement, accusing AI startup of stealing news content

CNN is seeking monetary damages and a court order blocking Perplexity from using its intellectual property without authorization, Reuters reported. The network argues that the company’s practices threaten the economics of journalism by repackaging original reporting into competing AI-generated answers.

“CNN’s lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits,” the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned news company said in a statement.

“By exploiting CNN’s reporting in this manner, Perplexity violates the protections afforded by copyright law and undermines the economic incentives that make original newsgathering possible,” CNN said in the complaint.

The lawsuit lands at a tense moment for the AI industry. Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, publishers, authors, artists, and media companies have raised concerns about AI systems using copyrighted material without payment or consent. Courts are now being asked to decide where fair use ends and infringement begins.

Perplexity has already faced legal pressure from several major media and technology companies, including The New York Times, Reddit, and Dow Jones. The startup has been accused of scraping websites and reproducing copyrighted content through AI-generated summaries that compete with original publishers for traffic and advertising revenue.

In December 2025, TechStartups covered The New York Times’ lawsuit against Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement, part of a growing wave of legal challenges tied to agentic AI systems and automated content collection.

At the same time, many media companies are striking licensing deals with AI firms instead of heading to court. Those agreements give AI companies access to verified news archives in exchange for compensation, attribution, and links back to original reporting.

One major copyright case already reached a settlement last year when Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to resolve claims brought by a group of authors over alleged misuse of their books for AI training.

CNN’s lawsuit now places one of the world’s largest news organizations directly at the center of the AI copyright battle, a fight that could redefine the relationship between publishers and generative AI companies for years to come.

Perplexity Founder and CEO