The AI internet search firm Perplexity is being hit by one other lawsuit alleging copyright and trademark infringement, this time from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. Britannica, the centuries-old writer that owns Merriam-Webster, sued Perplexity in New York federal court docket on September tenth.
Within the lawsuit, the businesses allege that Perplexity’s “reply engine” scrapes their web sites, steals their web site visitors, and plagiarizes their copyrighted materials. Britannica additionally alleges trademark infringement when Perplexity attaches the 2 corporations’ names to hallucinated or incomplete content material.
The phrase “plagiarize” illustrates the purpose of the lawsuit. The court docket doc contains back-to-back screenshots that present Perplexity’s result’s equivalent to Merriam-Webster’s definition.