The BBC is pursuing legal action against Perplexity, a US-based AI firm, alleging its chatbot reproduces BBC content verbatim without authorization.
The BBC has formally demanded Perplexity cease using its content, delete existing copies, and offer financial compensation for past usage. This marks the BBC’s first such legal action against an AI company.
Perplexity responded by stating the BBC’s claims are evidence of the BBC’s efforts to protect Google’s alleged illegal monopoly, without elaborating on the connection.
The BBC’s legal threat, delivered in a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, cites copyright infringement and breach of the BBC’s terms of use.
The BBC points to its research revealing inaccuracies in several popular AI chatbots, including Perplexity AI, particularly regarding the summarization of BBC news stories. This, the BBC argues, damages its reputation and erodes audience trust.
The surge in popularity of AI chatbots and image generators since the launch of ChatGPT has raised concerns about the unauthorized use of existing content.
Many generative AI models utilize vast quantities of web data gathered through web scraping, a practice prompting British media publishers to advocate for stronger copyright protections.
The Professional Publishers Association (PPA) echoes these concerns, highlighting the threat to the UK publishing industry from the illegal scraping of content by AI platforms.
While many organizations utilize “robots.txt” to restrict bot access, compliance is voluntary, and bots often disregard these directives. The BBC’s letter states that despite blocking Perplexity’s crawlers, the company continues to violate “robots.txt.”
Mr. Srinivas previously denied ignoring “robots.txt” instructions, and Perplexity maintains it doesn’t use website content for AI model pre-training.
Perplexity’s AI chatbot, marketed as an “answer engine,” synthesizes information from various sources, though it advises users to verify its accuracy. A previous incident involved Apple suspending an AI feature generating false BBC News headlines after BBC complaints.
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