The Chicago Tribune has formally initiated a federal lawsuit against the artificial intelligence search platform Perplexity, asserting a series of copyright infringement violations. This case, first reported by TechCrunch, was filed in a federal court located in New York and has already drawn considerable attention across legal and technology circles. The Tribune’s legal team contends that Perplexity unlawfully utilized the newspaper’s proprietary content in ways that surpass legitimate use, potentially setting a major precedent for how traditional journalism and generative AI systems coexist.
According to the complaint, attorneys representing the Chicago Tribune reached out to Perplexity in mid-October to directly inquire whether the AI search engine had been incorporating or referencing the Tribune’s intellectual property within its system. The lawsuit notes that Perplexity’s legal representatives denied that the company had explicitly trained its artificial intelligence models on any Tribune-owned works. However, they did acknowledge that the models might rely on what they termed ‘non-verbatim factual summaries,’ or paraphrased data derived from information that could include the newspaper’s reporting.
Despite these assurances, the Tribune’s legal counsel asserts that Perplexity has, in fact, delivered segments of the newspaper’s reporting verbatim to users. This means, according to the filing, that Perplexity may have reproduced or displayed exact sentences or paragraphs originally published by the Tribune, raising profound concerns about unauthorized duplication and the extent to which algorithmic systems may rely on scraped text from paid or protected sources.
The Tribune’s lawsuit goes further by identifying Perplexity’s Retrieval Augmented Generation—commonly referred to as RAG—as a critical component of the alleged infringement. RAG is an advanced mechanism designed to enhance the accuracy of AI-generated responses by restricting the model’s knowledge retrieval process to verified, factual sources rather than speculative or fabricated information. In theory, it is intended to minimize the problem of ‘hallucinations’ in generative AI. However, in this instance, the Tribune claims that Perplexity’s implementation of RAG unlawfully integrates the newspaper’s editorial content, which it purportedly scrapes and employs without any formal licensing agreement or authorization.
Adding to these accusations, the Tribune alleges that Perplexity’s proprietary Comet browser further exacerbates the infringement by bypassing the newspaper’s digital paywall. Through this mechanism, Perplexity can allegedly generate detailed summaries of Tribune articles that would otherwise require a subscription to access. The suit argues that this practice effectively undermines the Tribune’s business model and diminishes the economic value of its premium journalism, blurring the boundary between technological innovation and the protection of intellectual property.
This legal action by the Tribune aligns with a broader pattern of lawsuits filed by major news organizations seeking to challenge what they view as the unregulated use of their creative output by AI developers. The Tribune is part of a coalition of seventeen news publications owned by MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing that collectively sued both OpenAI and Microsoft in April. That ongoing lawsuit focuses on the alleged use of copyrighted journalism to train large language models. Additionally, nine other publications affiliated with the same media groups initiated similar lawsuits against these companies in November, signaling a growing collective effort within the news industry to defend its rights against AI model training practices.
While numerous lawsuits have already been brought by authors, artists, and media creators over the use of their intellectual property in AI training datasets, the Tribune’s case adds a novel dimension by questioning the legal responsibilities surrounding RAG-based systems. The court’s treatment of this issue could influence the future interpretation of data sourcing, content scraping, and output generation within the AI industry, potentially defining new boundaries for how AI systems may legally ingest and reproduce information.
At the time of publication, Perplexity had not issued an official response either to the Tribune’s own report about the lawsuit or to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The company has, however, faced several other similar complaints in recent months. Reddit, for instance, filed its own lawsuit against Perplexity in October, claiming that the AI platform had misused user-generated content. Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, has also initiated legal proceedings against the company. Furthermore, although Amazon chose not to pursue immediate litigation, it reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity in response to concerns about its AI-driven browser’s behavior during online shopping queries.
These accumulating legal challenges underscore an escalating tension between media organizations and technology companies over control and fair compensation for digital content in the era of artificial intelligence. As the October 13–15, 2026, TechCrunch event in San Francisco approaches, the industry will likely continue scrutinizing how emerging legal doctrines and court decisions will redefine the ethical and regulatory landscape connecting journalism and machine learning innovation.
Sourse: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/04/chicago-tribune-sues-perplexity/
