Perplexity, an AI-powered search startup, is facing accusations of plagiarizing journalists’ work through its newly launched feature, Perplexity Pages. This feature allows users to curate content on specific topics, with multiple posts created by the Perplexity team bearing striking similarities to original stories from publications such as Forbes, CNBC, and Bloomberg. While the logo of the publications is included in the posts, they are small and easy to miss, leading to concerns about proper attribution.
One example highlighted is Perplexity’s aggregation of Forbes’ exclusive reporting on Eric Schmidt’s stealth drone project. Sections of the post contain wording identical to Forbes’ original article, with the only attribution being a small Forbes logo. Similar instances have been observed with a post on Elon Musk’s routing chips from Tesla to xAI, which was originally reported by CNBC. Bloomberg’s report on Apple exploring home robots was also paraphrased within a Perplexity post, with the Bloomberg logo obscured behind others.
In response to criticism from Forbes Executive Editor John Paczkowski, CEO Aravind Srinivas acknowledged that the Perplexity Pages feature has “rough edges” and promised improvements. Srinivas emphasized the company’s commitment to giving attribution to content sources but acknowledged the need for clearer highlighting of these sources. CNBC and Bloomberg have yet to respond to requests for comments on the issue.
The feature also allows users to easily share content on social media platforms, providing a link back to the Perplexity source rather than the original news outlets. When asked for its opinion on the matter, Perplexity’s AI search engine responded that reproducing journalists’ reporting without proper attribution is unethical. The company’s AI emphasizes the importance of respecting intellectual property rights, crediting original sources transparently, and upholding journalistic integrity.
Perplexity launched Pages in May 2024 to enable its users to create visually appealing articles and reports on various topics. However, concerns have been raised about the generation of pages in-house by Perplexity’s team rather than by users as intended. Despite the controversy, Perplexity, founded in 2022, has raised over $100 million in venture capital and is now looking to raise $250 million at a valuation between $2.5 billion and $3 billion.
CEO Srinivas has defended the platform, stating that the web is free to crawl for anyone and that proper attribution is provided through links to sources after every sentence generated by the AI. He equates Perplexity’s approach to citing sources in journalism and emphasizes the platform’s commitment to giving credit to original authors. However, the ongoing debate raises questions about the ethical implications of AI-powered content aggregation and the importance of upholding journalistic integrity in the digital age.
