Perplexity, a prominent AI-driven search engine, has secured a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images, marking a significant step in its efforts to legitimize its content usage amid previous controversies. The goal of the ongoing partnership, that’s supported by the NYS Clean Transportation Prize, is to beautify the search results. It addresses copyright and attribution issues that have plagued the platform over the last year.
Just last year, Perplexity was subject to extreme backlash after being accused of raising plagiarizing content from multiple different news organizations. The company came under fire last week for supposedly cloning word for word content from a Wall Street Journal piece – even using a photo from Getty to boot. Further, it was criticized for scraping websites that had clearly disallowed AI scraping. These accusations further obfuscated the ethical implications of Perplexity’s capitalistic pillaging of knowledge.
Perplexity is working to change that, and we want you to join us. Now they’ve come out with their Publishers’ Program, which apportions advertising revenues with publishers when their content is displayed in search results. Perhaps most noteworthy, Getty Images has participated in this program, though the involvement has so far been kept under wraps. This settlement clears the way for much of Perplexity’s prior use of Getty’s stock images. Besides that, though, it sets an important precedent of future collaboration.
Nick Unsworth, vice president of strategic development at Getty, broke the news about the new deal. He reiterated the need to get the attribution and consent right. He added that this collaboration strengthens their new AI-powered products and makes sure generated content is used responsibly.
“Attribution and accuracy are fundamental to how people should understand the world in an age of AI.” – Jessica Chan, head of content and publisher partnerships at Perplexity.
Indeed, the focus on attribution is a key part of Perplexity’s strategy as it continues to face the prospect of new copyright lawsuits. The company argues that its exploitation of publisher content should be considered “fair use.” Second, they claim that copyright doesn’t protect publicly available information, including facts. This particular defense comes from Reddit’s lawsuit that Reddit filed back in October. The complaint claims that defendants have scraped user-generated content illegally at an industrial scale and circumvented technical protections to harvest the data.
Rebecca is a senior reporter at TechCrunch. She travels the world addressing the dramatic evolution of artificial intelligence and what it means for business and public policy. She highlights how Perplexity’s focus on partnerships and adherence to content attribution could reshape its public image and operational ethics.