The BBC is taking a firm stand against the AI company Perplexity, accusing the startup of using its content without permission to train artificial intelligence tools, according to a report by the Financial Times (FT) on Friday.

This makes the BBC the latest major news organisation to raise concerns about AI systems using news content without proper licensing.

The British broadcaster has reportedly threatened to seek a court injunction unless Perplexity stops scraping its website, deletes any of its content already used for training, and submits a "proposal for financial compensation" for what the BBC describes as the misuse of its intellectual property.

The report says these demands were included in a letter addressed to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, as cited by the Financial Times. The BBC later confirmed the details of this report in a statement to Reuters.

Perplexity, an AI-powered search and chatbot platform, has previously been accused of plagiarizing content by other media outlets, including Forbes and Wired. In response to such criticism, the company recently launched a revenue-sharing program meant to address concerns from publishers.

Back in October 2023, The New York Times also sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company, demanding that Perplexity stop using its content for AI training and output generation.

Ever since tools like ChatGPT became popular, publishers have raised alarms about AI models collecting and summarizing content from across the internet, often without credit or permission. These summaries, while helpful to users, may pull content directly from publishers’ websites, raising copyright and ethical concerns.

According to the FT, the BBC claims that Perplexity reproduced sections of its content word-for-word and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results generated by the platform.

In a statement to Reuters, Perplexity denied any wrongdoing, calling the BBC’s accusations "manipulative and opportunistic." The company also claimed that the broadcaster has “a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet, and intellectual property law.”

Perplexity is quickly becoming a big player in the AI world. The platform provides search-based answers similar to ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, and is supported by tech heavyweights including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, AI chipmaker Nvidia, and Japan’s SoftBank Group.

Just last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Perplexity is in advanced talks to raise $500 million, a deal that would value the startup at $14 billion.

As legal battles over AI and content usage grow more intense, Perplexity’s clash with the BBC may set the tone for how news media and AI platforms work together — or clash — in the digital future.

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