The fight between news companies and AI companies is getting bigger each month. One of the latest cases comes from the Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune is a very old and respected newspaper in the United States. It has now sued the AI search engine Perplexity for using its news content without permission. This lawsuit is important because it raises new questions about copyright, news rights, and how AI tools get their information.
In this post, we will break everything down in very simple words. You will understand what the lawsuit is about, why it matters, what Perplexity is accused of doing, and how this case fits into the larger battle between media companies and AI companies. The aim is to explain it clearly so that even someone who knows nothing about AI or copyright can follow along.
What is Perplexity and why is it in trouble
Perplexity is an AI search engine. Many people use it because it gives fast answers and easy summaries. Instead of clicking through many websites, the tool shows simple responses in a short form. This is one reason why newspapers and publishers are worried. They fear that if people get answers from AI tools, they may not visit the real news websites.
The Chicago Tribune says Perplexity is not only summarising its articles. The Tribune says Perplexity is taking its content word for word. The issue is that the newspaper never gave permission for its content to be copied in this way. News articles are protected by copyright, which means nobody can use them without approval.
The letter that started everything
According to the lawsuit, the lawyers of the Chicago Tribune contacted Perplexity in October. They asked Perplexity if it was using the Tribune content in any way. Perplexity replied that it did not train its AI models using Tribune stories. Instead, Perplexity said it may receive short factual summaries from somewhere on the internet.
The Tribune says this answer was misleading. In the lawsuit, the Tribune claims that Perplexity is giving users full paragraphs from Tribune stories. The newspaper says this is not a summary. It is copying. And copying without permission breaks copyright law.
The paywall issue and the Comet browser
The situation becomes even more serious with another claim in the lawsuit. The Tribune says that Perplexity uses a feature called the Comet browser to get information from behind paywalls. A paywall is the screen that appears on a news website asking you to pay before you read the story. Many newspapers use paywalls so that they can earn money. Without money, they cannot pay their journalists or run their business.
The Tribune says Perplexity uses the Comet browser to go around these paywalls. It says the AI tool then gives people detailed summaries of paid stories. If this is true, it is a serious problem. It means Perplexity is taking paid content without paying for it.
This part of the lawsuit may be one of the most important parts because it is not only about copyright. It is about breaking paywalls, which many companies and courts take very seriously.
The role of RAG and why it matters
Another key topic in the lawsuit is something called RAG. RAG stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. It is a method that AI tools use to reduce mistakes. The idea is that the system will look for information from trusted sources instead of guessing. This makes the AI answers more accurate.
The Chicago Tribune says Perplexity is using RAG to pull information directly from Tribune stories. The newspaper claims that the AI tool uses its articles as part of the data that feeds the system. If this is true, the Tribune says it should have been asked for permission. It says this is another form of copyright misuse.
This part of the case is very new in the world of AI. Many lawsuits talk about training data. But this one focuses on real time access. The court may need to decide if RAG systems should also follow copyright rules.
This is part of a bigger battle
This lawsuit is not happening in isolation. Many other companies are filing similar cases. Earlier this year, the Chicago Tribune and sixteen other news publishers sued OpenAI and Microsoft. They said their content was used to train large AI models without permission. That case is still ongoing.
Other companies are also taking action. Reddit sued Perplexity in October. Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, is suing as well. Britannica and Merriam Webster also filed lawsuits against Perplexity. Amazon sent a warning letter accusing Perplexity of using its shopping data without permission.
All these cases show that news companies and AI companies are moving toward a major legal showdown.
The Bottom Line
This story is not only about one newspaper and one AI company. It affects the future of news, search, copyright, and the internet as a whole. If AI tools can take full articles and summaries from news websites, news companies may lose readers and money. If AI companies need to pay publishers, it may change how these tools work.
The courts will need to decide how far AI companies can go and what rules they must follow. This lawsuit may help shape the future of AI search engines and how they use information.
