CNN is the latest to sue Perplexity for copyright infringement, alleging the AI firm “has unlawfully copied over 10,000 CNN stories, videos, images, and other works to power its products and tools.”

The suit said the two sides tried but failed to reach an agreement in 2025 and Perplexity continued ripping off CNN content and claiming a relationship with the news network that does not exist despite repeated warnings that the moves are illegal.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and and other outlets have previously filed similar suits against the Jeff Bezos-backed generative AI startup. The actions have slammed Perplexity for enabling users to skip the links to original publishers’ websites.

“The public rely on high quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it. We prefer that they do so through sensible licensing arrangements, but if they refuse to do that as Perplexity has so far refused to do, they will have to pay through legal damages. There is no free option,” said a CNN spokesperson Thursday of the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

“Perplexity’s conduct violates CNN’s exclusive rights under the Copyright Act at two principal stages: First, at the input stage, Perplexity unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes CNN’s content from CNN Digital Platforms and third-party platforms using software programs, including “PerplexityBot” and “Perplexity-User,” to build an AI-First search index and to provide CNN’s content in real time as input to LLMs to formulate responses to users’ prompts. And second, at the output stage, when Perplexity’s GenAI Products generate outputs that are identical or substantially similar to CNN’s content,” the suit reads.

The firm also violates CNN’s trademarks “by falsely claiming an affiliation between Perplexity and CNN that does not exist. Perplexity’s GenAI products generate fabricated content that claims that its users can pay to upgrade and get access to CNN’s premium content, when no such option exists. Thus, Perplexity uses CNN’s famous, registered trademarks and falsely attributes an affiliation between Perplexity and CNN to its users which causes confusion,” the suit says.

The firms GenAI Products “misleadingly omit or modify portions of CNN’s content without disclosing those omissions or modifications and display the inaccurate reproductions alongside CNN’s famous trademark.”

More to come