🟨 Questionable morals, again...

👉 The what and the why

Perplexity, the search engine and AI assistant platform, is being accused of plagiarism and unethical web scraping.

Like most chatbots, the platform lets users ask questions and spits out the answers for you. The difference, however, is that Perplexity searches the web and functions similarly to a search engine, even providing references for its information.

While providing sources is a great move, many news outlets are now expressing concerns that perplexity may be ignoring web scraping standards.

The accusations

The accusations originally came from Wired on June 19th 2024, and has since been picked up by other sources as well. Specifically, the accusations center around:

• Plagiarism: Forbes specifically alleged that Perplexity plagiarized one of its articles, while Wired reported that the AI assistant closely paraphrased its content with minimal attribution.

• Unethical web scraping: The second major accusation is that Perplexity AI has engaged in unethical web scraping. Wired's investigation revealed that Perplexity ignored the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard that allows websites to specify which parts should not be accessed by web crawlers.

While acknowledging the accusations, Perplexity maintains their position that they have done nothing wrong. Furthermore, they claim they are only doing what’s legal within fair use copyright laws and have not scraped content that is requested to be excluded.

It’s also worth noting that publishers have direct monetary benefits to accusing Perplexity and similar platforms as the two stand as direct competitors.

👉 The implications for you

The Perplexity situation brings up some important points for anyone working with or using AI in their professional life.

Depending on which side of the fence you find yourself, this may be bad or great news.

Publishers

Publishers will likely demand more transparency from AI companies about how their content is being used and seek greater control over access to their websites. Two key points are:

• Content Protection and Attribution: It’s challenging, if not impossible, to fully protect your content online from unauthorized use. And the allegations against Perplexity highlight the need for stronger measures to safeguard intellectual property online.

• Revenue Concerns: The potential long-term impact of AI summarization on original content creation and revenue streams is at the heart of these accusations. Publishers may need to explore new monetization strategies or partnerships with AI companies to maintain their financial viability.
  

AI users & developers:

AI developers are under increased scrutiny regarding their data collection methods, and the need to ensure ethical and legal scraping practices is all the more important.

• Legal and Regulatory Challenges: AI developers may face potential legal issues and regulatory scrutiny. They need to be prepared to defend their practices and possibly adapt their technologies to comply with evolving legal standards

• Credit where credit is due: In today's digital world, it's super easy to share information, but it's really important to acknowledge the original sources. It's not just a legal thing – it's about being fair and trustworthy, whether you're an individual or a business.

🔥 Our take on it

We believe the Perplexity situation can be seen in two ways; a tech company doing morally questionable things, or a stagnant news publisher is desperately grasping for air as the market outpaces them.

To a certain extent, both can be true.

Most importantly, however, both sides will need to meet somewhere in the middle. Publishers aren’t going away; they will likely need to change format or structure, but they will indeed remain. And AI advancements aren’t going to slow down any time soon.

So, finding a middle ground will be crucial for a couple of reasons.

Call us biased, but publishers serve an important role in society: providing accurate, impartial news to the public. Artificial intelligence platforms like Perplexity will continue to grow as investors pump money into them.

Ultimately, this news serves as a reminder that with any fast-developing technology, we also quickly need to establish clear guidelines and ethical standards.

👋 See you on Thursday!

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