CNN Initiates Legal Action Against Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

CNN alleges that Perplexity has engaged in the unauthorized reproduction of thousands of its news stories, videos, and images to fuel its AI platform.

Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026

In a significant escalation of the legal conflict between news organizations and artificial intelligence firms, CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in a New York federal court. The media giant claims the AI-driven search engine is unlawfully distributing its proprietary, copyrighted material.

According to the complaint filed on Thursday, Perplexity allegedly misappropriated thousands of CNN articles, video assets, and images to power its services, resulting in the distribution of “identical or substantially similar” content that competes directly with the original source.

“You can’t copyright facts,” stated Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer in response to the legal action.

CNN is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a permanent injunction to prevent Perplexity from further infringing upon its intellectual property rights.

“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 organization stated.

The complaint further asserts, “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.”

Since the 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the media industry has faced growing concerns regarding the repurposing of journalistic content within chatbot responses. This has sparked a global debate over copyright, fair compensation, and content ownership.

CNN’s litigation is part of a broader wave of high-stakes legal battles in the United States, where authors, publishers, and news outlets are suing technology companies for allegedly using their work to train large language models (LLMs). Last year, Anthropic became the first AI company to settle a similar class-action lawsuit from a group of authors, agreeing to a $1.5 billion settlement.

This lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal challenges facing Perplexity. The company, which utilizes AI to crawl websites and provide direct answers to user queries, faces ongoing allegations of illegal data scraping and copyright infringement. Perplexity is currently defending itself against similar legal actions from The New York Times, Reddit, and Dow Jones, among other entities.

In response to these industry-wide pressures, several news organizations have pivoted toward formal licensing agreements and strategic partnerships with Big Tech and generative AI firms. These deals aim to secure access to verified news data while ensuring publishers receive compensation and proper attribution via links to original reporting.

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