AI-powered search engine Perplexity further entrenched itself with Getty Images, recently signing a multi-year licensing agreement. This new partnership comes after a difficult year for Perplexity. The company found itself under a massive spotlight when it was accused of plagiarism and unethical web scraping practices by major news organizations.
The trouble started when Perplexity faced criticism for scraping sites that had outright banned AI scraping in their terms of use. In particular, the company came under fire when removing content from a Wall Street Journal article featuring a Getty photo. These allegations have since prompted inquiries into the ethics of Perplexity’s content sourcing practices.
Jessica Chan, head of content and publisher partnerships at Perplexity, focused the need for integrity in the digital age. She stated,
“Attribution and accuracy are fundamental to how people should understand the world in an age of AI.”
This dedication to attribution represents a key principle of Perplexity’s approach as it seeks to protect itself against copyright claims. The company now claims that how it uses publisher content is “fair use.” Rather, it argues that facts that anyone can observe or measure should not be eligible for copyright protection.
Though much adversity remains, Perplexity has a lot of cool things in development. To start, they’ll introduce a new Publishers’ Program to split ad revenue with publishers whose work appears in search results. Getty’s participation in this program is historically significant. It does signal a new collaborative approach to content sourcing, though this initiative was not foreshadowed in advance.
This partnership, Getty’s Nick Unsworth, vice president of strategic development at Getty, recognized was an important step. He remarked that the agreement
“acknowledges the importance of properly attributed consent and its value in enhancing AI-powered products.”
This new agreement retroactively legitimizes some of Perplexity’s earlier, unauthorized use of Getty’s stock photos. It goes a long way in addressing worries about “fair use”. Reddit filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in October, accusing it of conducting “industrial-scale, unlawful” scraping of user-generated content. The legal woes continue even further as the lawsuit alleges that Perplexity evaded technical protections designed to safeguard this information.
Perplexity, in light of these controversies, seems to be charting a different course through these stormy seas, with an emphasis on attribution and collaboration. Getty Images partnership pictured Getty could become a company of consequence with today’s partnership. It provides an excellent opportunity to bolster its integrity while correcting past missteps.
