Chicago Tribune Files Federal Copyright Lawsuit Against Perplexity Over Unauthorized AI Use of News Content

The Chicago Tribune has initiated legal action against AI search company Perplexity, alleging systemic copyright infringement tied to its use of Tribune journalism in AI-generated responses. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, claims Perplexity is reproducing Tribune content verbatim despite earlier assurances from the company that it did not use the newspaper’s work to train its models.

The complaint asserts Perplexity relies on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that scrape and deploy Tribune articles without permission, including through the company’s Comet browser, which is accused of bypassing paywalls to produce detailed summaries.

The case expands ongoing legal pressure from news publishers seeking to protect intellectual property in the AI era. The Tribune is already part of multiple lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft over unauthorized training use of news content, while Perplexity faces additional disputes from Reddit and Dow Jones as the AI search market confronts new copyright scrutiny.