BBC Demands Compensation from AI Firm for Copyright Breach in Content Use Dispute
The BBC has warned AI firm Perplexity over copyright infringement for using its content without permission. Perplexity denies the claims, accusing the BBC of protecting Google's market share.
BBC Threatens Legal Action Against AI Chatbot Over Copyright Infringement
The BBC has issued a legal warning to Perplexity, a US-based AI company, accusing its chatbot of reproducing BBC content verbatim without permission. The broadcaster demands that Perplexity immediately cease using BBC material, delete any stored content, and propose financial compensation for prior use. This marks the first instance of the BBC taking formal legal steps against an AI firm.
Perplexity responded, dismissing the BBC’s claims and alleging the broadcaster's stance is linked to protecting Google's market dominance, though it offered no further clarification or evidence supporting this claim.
Details of the Legal Complaint
The BBC's letter, addressed to Perplexity's CEO Aravind Srinivas, states that the unauthorized use of its content constitutes copyright infringement under UK law and breaches the BBC’s terms of use. The letter references research published earlier this year that identified inaccuracies in how several AI chatbots, including Perplexity, summarize news stories—some involving BBC content.
The BBC emphasizes that certain Perplexity AI responses fail to meet its Editorial Guidelines, which require impartiality and accuracy. The broadcaster warns this misrepresentation damages its reputation and undermines trust among UK licence fee payers who fund its operations.
Web Scraping and Copyright Concerns
AI chatbots and image generators have surged in popularity since late 2022, raising questions on how they utilize copyrighted material. Much of the data used to train generative AI models is obtained via web scraping—automated tools that extract content from websites without explicit permission.
This practice has drawn criticism from UK media publishers and creatives, who have called on the government to strengthen copyright protections. The Professional Publishers Association (PPA), representing over 300 media brands, expressed concern that AI platforms are failing to comply with UK copyright law by scraping content without authorization or payment. The PPA highlighted the risk this poses to the UK's £4.4 billion publishing industry and its 55,000 employees.
Many publishers, including the BBC, use a robots.txt file to restrict bots from accessing large volumes of content. While this file requests bots to avoid certain pages, compliance is voluntary and not always respected by automated crawlers. The BBC asserts that despite blocking two of Perplexity’s crawlers, the company has not adhered to these restrictions. Perplexity denies ignoring robots.txt instructions and clarifies that it does not use scraped content for AI model pre-training.
Perplexity’s Position and AI Chatbot Functionality
Perplexity describes its chatbot as an "answer engine" that searches the internet, identifies trusted sources, and synthesizes information into clear, up-to-date responses. The company advises users to verify answers due to the risk of false information, a known issue with AI chatbots.
Notably, in January, Apple suspended an AI feature after it generated false headlines for BBC News app notifications, following complaints from the broadcaster.
Legal Implications for AI Firms
This dispute highlights growing legal scrutiny over AI companies’ use of copyrighted content. For legal professionals, it underscores the importance of understanding how AI models source material and the risks of copyright infringement.
Companies developing or deploying AI chatbots should review their data collection practices carefully and consider the legal frameworks protecting original content. The BBC’s action may set a precedent for how media organizations enforce copyrights against AI firms in the future.
