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Buzzy AI Search Engine Perplexity Is Directly Ripping Off Content From News Outlets

Forbes [unpaywalled]:” AI-powered search startup Perplexity appears to be plagiarizing journalists’ work through its newly launched feature, Perplexity Pages, which lets people curate content on a particular topic. Multiple posts that have been “curated” by the Perplexity team on its platform are strikingly similar to original stories from multiple publications, including Forbes, CNBC and Bloomberg. The posts, which have already gathered tens of thousands of views, do not mention the publications by name in the article text — the only attributions are small, easy-to-miss logos that link out to them. For instance, a Perplexity aggregation of Forbes’ exclusive reporting on Eric Schmidt’s stealth drone project contains several fragments that appear to have been lifted, including a custom illustration. Over the past several months, Forbes has broken a series of stories on the former Google CEO’s secretive efforts to develop AI-guided aircraft for the battlefield, and this week reported that Schmidt had poached talent from SpaceX, Apple and Google, and has been testing his drones in the wealthy Silicon Valley town of Menlo Park. Portions of the post contain nearly identical wording and it includes all of the details first reported by Forbes. The only attribution is a small, barely identifiable Forbes logo as a citation. The Perplexity aggregation also includes an image created by the Forbes design team that looks to be slightly modified by Perplexity. Perplexity’s aggregated blog was the top item on its Discover tab and has more than 17,000 views…”

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