Shah said the publishing industry will lose billions of dollars over the years. Across AI firms, publishers will likely lose north of $10 billion, he added.
“When publishers have blocks for ‘don’t use my content,’ and these engines can go around and monetize it, it’s the publishers’ IP that technically is getting monetized and further training the AI algorithms,” said Shah.
Perplexity has not responded to comment.
Workarounds
The Times started blocking Perplexity in February this year. However, an analysis by Thomas Höppner, partner at Hausfeld law firm, showed that Perplexity was surfacing answers from the publisher, some of which were from paywalled articles.
When asked, “What does NYT write about Germany vs. Scotland?” Perplexity reproduced content from The New York Times reporting on the Euro 2024 tournament, citing The Times as its source.
Although the question is not typically what someone would query on a search engine, Perplexity’s answer “Germany thrashed 10-man Scotland 5-1 in the opening match of Euro 2024,” closely mimics that of The Times, Höppner alleges.
“As the law and our terms of service make clear, scraping or using The Times’ content is prohibited without our prior written permission,” a Times spokesperson told ADWEEK. “We did not grant permission for the example cited here.”
The Times did not share whether it is planning to take legal action.
Condé Nast titles blocked Perplexity’s crawler via its robots.txt file earlier this year. Still, in some cases, especially on Wired, Perplexity summarizes answers similar to the publisher’s content.
When ADWEEK asked “What is the summer trend this year as per Vogue,” Perplexity gave this response, citing the Condé Nast-owned publication as its source: “Statement gowns are out, and minimalist chic with wardrobe staples like trench coats, pencil skirts, trouser suits, and good jeans is in. Looks tagged as “minimalism” were up 46% on the runway, while logo-heavy looks were down 52%.”
An article in Vogue dated June 17 2024 includes the very same details.
