A small number of news publishers have followed in the footsteps of The New York Times to sue OpenAI and other AI companies over the unauthorised use of their content.

However many more now have signed deals with the AI companies which commonly include the use of their content as reference points for user queries in tools like ChatGPT (with citation back to their websites currently promised) as well as giving them the use of the tech to build their own products.

Most agreements are with OpenAI and, more recently, Prorata. But three publishers have now signed AI deals with Amazon: The New York Times, Conde Nast and Hearst.

Although not formal legal action, it was first reported by the Financial Times on 20 June 2025 that the BBC has threatened action against Perplexity.

The BBC claims to have evidence the AI start-up’s “default AI model” was “trained using BBC content”, that search results in Perplexity have included verbatim BBC content and very recent links, and says it may seek an injunction unless Perplexity stops scraping its content, deletes any copies of its content held for the purpose of developing the tech, and provides a “proposal for financial compensation”.

Perplexity called the BBC’s claims “manipulative and opportunistic”, said it had a “fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law”, and accused the broadcaster of being willing to “preserve Google‘s illegal monopoly for its own self-interest”.