BBC Draws Legal Battle Lines Against Perplexity in AI Data Scraping Showdown

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2025-06-20 22:04:17

The British Broadcasting Corporation is flexing its legal muscles against AI upstart Perplexity—turns out even public broadcasters won't let you train your models for free.

When copyright meets machine learning

The BBC's legal team reportedly went nuclear after discovering Perplexity allegedly scraped content without permission. No dollar figures were disclosed—probably because the Beeb wants a pound of algorithmic flesh instead.

Media giants vs. AI upstarts: Who owns the data?

This isn't just about one broadcaster. It's a shot across the bow for every AI firm vacuuming up copyrighted material like it's 1999 dot-com bubble free-for-all. The irony? BBC content is taxpayer-funded—but apparently not AI-bro-fundable.

Legal experts predict this could trigger a wave of similar lawsuits. Because nothing fuels innovation like a good old-fashioned licensing racket. Meanwhile in crypto-land, degenerate traders are probably shorting Perplexity tokens that don't even exist yet.

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Compensation Proposal

The BBC has warned that it may take legal action unless Perplexity AI stops scraping its content, deletes existing copies used to train its AI systems, and submits “a proposal for financial compensation” for the alleged misuse of its intellectual property.

“This constitutes copyright infringement in the UK and breach of the BBC’s terms of use,” the letter, addressed to Perplexity boss Aravind Srinivas, says.

The BBC said it had found significant issues with representation of its content in some Perplexity AI responses it analyzed. It said such output fell short of BBC Editorial Guidelines around the provision of impartial and accurate news.

“It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC’s reputation with audiences – including UK license fee payers who fund the BBC – and undermining their trust in the BBC,” it added.

Perplexity Complaints

It is the first time that the BBC has taken such action against an AI company. However, in January Apple (AAPL) suspended an AI feature that generated false headlines for BBC News app notifications following BBC complaints.

These concerns are not new to Perplexity which has also been backed by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos.

It has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address publisher concerns.

Last October, the New York Times sent it a “cease and desist” notice, demanding the firm stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.

These concerns, however, are doing little to stymie the company’s growth. Earlier this month, Srinivas reported a 20% month-over-month increase and 780 million queries in May. Speaking at the recent Bloomberg Tech Summit, he said that the platform could hit 1 billion weekly queries if growth continues.

He added that internet users are looking for fresh alternatives to legacy search engines like Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL).