AI search engine Perplexity says it was working on revenue-sharing deals with publishers when Forbes staff accused it of plagiarizing Forbes' White Stork scoop
The Scoop — Perplexity, the AI search startup that recently came under fire from Forbes for allegedly misusing its content …
The company had also signaled a move toward advertising, despite earlier positioning search as outside ad-driven models, in its plan to sell ads. The clash therefore bears directly on whether publishers can participate in, rather than merely supply, Perplexity's emerging business model.
First-order effects
Forbes gains leverage in challenging Perplexity's use of its White Stork reporting, while Perplexity must reconcile publisher-deal discussions with allegations that its product reproduced source material too closely.
Any publishers considering revenue-sharing arrangements have an immediate reason to seek clearer terms on attribution, permitted reuse, and compensation before associating their content with Perplexity.
Second-order effects
Publisher negotiations are likely to shift from broad revenue-sharing promises toward enforceable controls over how AI-generated pages quote, summarize, and link to source reporting.
AI search rivals seeking publisher inventory may face pressure to distinguish their sourcing and attribution practices, since access to premium reporting becomes tied to trust as well as payment.
Third-order effects
If similar disputes persist, AI search distribution could evolve toward a two-track content market: licensed publisher partnerships for high-value material alongside more constrained access to open-web sources.
The durable issue is whether revenue sharing can compensate for lost referral and brand value; if not, publishers may favor technical and contractual controls over participation.
The trend: AI search is moving from treating web content as freely available inference input toward negotiated, controlled commercial relationships with publishers.
I have no idea what's up with AI companies speed running the news coverage from “scrappy underdog” to “evil big tech” before they even get that big. We were going to pay you isn't an excuse for plagiarizing content. What seemed like an honest mistake now looks more deliberate. [i…
@ReedAlbergotti @semafor it doesn't feel like this is about our role as journalists in the traditional sense since it is about their story. reporters would fight with other reporters on twitter if they didn't get proper credit and the perplexity situation seems far more egregious…
“Perplexity generated more readers from the one Schmidt story it plagiarized from Forbes than it sent to Forbes from any and every post for the entire month of May. In AI nowadays, that trade gets you a billion-dollar valuation.” https://www.forbes.com/... [image]
@ReedAlbergotti @semafor i mean this whole idea that what we're going to be better at is extracting the valuable stuff from your work but still rely on you producing the underlying reporting is super disturbing. i would like to see perplexity and others produce novel valuable inf…
🟡 SCOOP: Perplexity, the AI search startup that recently came under fire from Forbes, was already planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers, @ReedAlbergotti reports. The deals would provide a framework to earn recurring income. https://www.semafor.com/...
More details on how Perplexity will be working closely with publishers to create healthy long-term incentive alignment. Thanks Reed for the in-depth perspective
Media companies need to lawyer up and file as a group against @perplexity_ai — which has been caught red handed. This is a $100m settlement and a serious injunction, and media/content companies need to pounce like @nytimes has with OpenAI Fight now, or lose your rights
interesting scoop: @perplexity_ai , even before it came under fire in the Forbes controversy, was planning an ad rev share program for publishers. In the past, getting ad revenue meant someone had to click on an article. Here, the substance of the article needs to match the
This is 100% why you'll see more paywalled content: AI. Forbes' @JohnPaczkowski has been lighting up Perplexity AI CEO @AravSrinivas for stealing exclusive *paywalled* content. @Jason wrote an excellent piece about AI steamrolling publishers via ChatGPT. Publishers fell for it [i…
The way the media is lashing out at @perplexity_ai, a 2yr old startup, is just yet another proof how the industry is losing its surefooted ways of controlling information and discourse.
Perplexity has now updated their forgery of our reporting to list us as the *third* citation after 2 reblogs of stories we broke, and to add an inline attribution to Forbes that, lol, points to Business Insider's reblog of our most recent work. [image]
@semafor @ReedAlbergotti nihilism @ReedAlbergotti . media companies steal too much reporting so let's shrug our shoulders with AI. the information is sometimes successful when it scolds publications for not crediting it. what's different here? public shame is one of the few lever…
@EricNewcomer @semafor Also, how is “public shame” literally the very first step? Is our job as journalists just online mob justice now? What happened to nuance and intellectual curiosity?
@EricNewcomer @semafor I said clearly that perplexity should have credited them higher up. I just don't think the Forbs people had to go for the jugular like that. I think twitter brings out the worst in people sometimes. A civil conversation would get more done.
@JohnPaczkowski They didn't ask for permission and took a substantial amount? Have you run more tests on this? You should publish dozens of examples like the NYTimes did
1. Lol. Nice story placement, Perplexity. 2. But it misses the point. Beyond attribution **The company took our paywalled work, without our permission, and competitively broadcast it across web, video, mobile — as though it were itself a media outlet.**
@campbell_brown What about small publishers? Are these deals only going to be for larger publishers (so far, that's been the case with ChatGPT)? Why has Perplexity stolen the content of Forbes and my site while charging $20/mo. Is it OK to have done so in the meantime? https://x.…
This seems like the right take - aligned incentives and a real potential ally for publishers: “Perplexity planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers”. https://www.semafor.com/...
@MohapatraHemant @perplexity_ai Imo irrelevant that theyre 2 years old. Theyre well funded, have some of the most well known advisors and investors and worth close to what the NYT is market cap wise. Cant hold tech startups to diff standards just because things move fast imo; reg…