Perplexity, an AI search startup, has entered a significant multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images. This collaboration permits Perplexity to incorporate Getty’s photographs into its AI-driven search and discovery platforms. The partnership indicates a strategic shift for Perplexity, which has faced accusations of content scraping and plagiarism, as it aims to build more structured content alliances.
Perplexity and Getty have been collaborating for over a year. Although not publicly disclosed until now, Getty was previously part of Perplexity's Publishers' Program. This initiative involved sharing ad revenue with publishers whose content appeared in Perplexity’s search results.
The new agreement, as revealed by an inside source, is not a conventional lump-sum licensing deal. The specifics were not disclosed, but it was noted that Perplexity does not use its own foundational models for training.
This formal arrangement seemingly validates Perplexity's former use of Getty’s stock images. In the past year, Perplexity has been criticized for alleged plagiarism and content scraping by multiple news outlets. Specifically, the startup was accused of using content, including a Getty photo, from a Wall Street Journal piece without proper permission.
Several media organizations were skeptical about the legality of Perplexity’s use of these images and raised questions about copyright infringement. Last year, a source mentioned discussions for a deal with Getty, but attempts to confirm this with Getty were unsuccessful until now.
In addition to these challenges, Perplexity faces a lawsuit from Reddit filed in October, accusing the startup of "industrial-scale, unlawful" data scraping. Reddit, which has a data licensing agreement with OpenAI, claims Perplexity bypassed technical barriers to extract data.
The arrangement with Getty is expected to enhance Perplexity’s capability to showcase images with proper credits and links back to their original sources in search results.
Nick Unsworth, Getty's vice president of strategic development, stated that the agreement underscores the importance of attributing content appropriately, which enriches AI applications.
Perplexity's head of content and publisher partnerships, Jessica Chan, highlighted the importance of attribution and accuracy in AI. “We’re enabling people to find answers through compelling visual narratives while ensuring the provenance and creators of the content are clearly identified,” Chan said.
Perplexity’s focus on proper attribution aligns with its defense strategy against copyright claims. The company argues that its use of publisher content is “fair use” as it involves publicly accessible facts, which are not protected by copyright, even if the content is behind a paywall or its scraping is explicitly restricted by publishers.