AI News Monitor

The BBC has demanded that the U.S.-based artificial intelligence company Perplexity stop reproducing its content without permission, marking the first time the British broadcaster has taken legal action against an AI firm.

In a letter to Perplexity’s chief executive, Aravind Srinivas, the BBC accused the company of copyright infringement, claiming its chatbot had replicated BBC articles “verbatim” and distributed inaccurate summaries that violated the broadcaster’s editorial standards. The BBC demanded that Perplexity cease using its content, delete any stored material, and propose financial compensation.

“This constitutes copyright infringement in the U.K. and breach of the BBC’s terms of use,” the letter stated. The broadcaster also expressed concern that Perplexity’s summaries of its reporting—some of which were found to be misleading—could damage its reputation and erode trust among audiences, including British license-fee payers.

Perplexity, which describes itself as an “answer engine,” responded with a statement accusing the BBC of acting to “preserve Google’s illegal monopoly,” though it did not elaborate on the connection. The company has previously denied ignoring website restrictions that block automated data scraping.

The dispute highlights growing tensions between media organizations and AI developers over the use of copyrighted material to train and power chatbots. British publishers, including members of the Professional Publishers Association, have urged the government to enforce copyright protections, warning that unchecked scraping threatens the U.K.’s £4.4 billion publishing industry.

While many websites use a “robots.txt” file to block AI crawlers, compliance remains voluntary. The BBC alleges Perplexity disregarded these restrictions—a claim the company has denied in the past.

The legal threat comes as AI-generated misinformation remains a persistent challenge. Earlier this year, Apple suspended an AI feature that falsely summarized BBC News notifications after the broadcaster raised concerns.

Perplexity maintains that it does not train its own foundational AI models and advises users to verify its responses for accuracy. But as AI tools proliferate, the battle over content ownership and fair use is far from settled.