The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is preparing to launch legal proceedings against artificial intelligence (AI) search platform Perplexity over allegations that the company has scraped its archived content without permission to train AI models. This information was reported by the Financial Times on Friday. Reuters, however, noted it had not independently verified the report at the time of publication.
According to the Financial Times, the BBC believes that Perplexity has accessed and used material from its vast content archives—spanning decades of journalism—to develop and improve its AI-driven services without securing proper licensing or authorization. This move follows broader concerns in the media sector about how emerging AI technologies access and utilize proprietary content.
The confrontation adds to the growing legal and ethical debate over how AI companies obtain training data, particularly from sources protected by copyright or established licensing agreements. News organizations, academic publishers, musicians, and visual artists have increasingly voiced concerns that their intellectual property is being used by AI firms without adequate compensation or acknowledgement.
The BBC’s potential legal steps underscore the increasing urgency public institutions feel in protecting their editorial work from being exploited by commercial AI tools. A spokesperson for the BBC has not yet commented publicly on the matter, and Perplexity has not responded to the allegations.
This case contributes to a wider international discourse over AI development practices, particularly as companies race to build more advanced generative and search-based intelligence platforms. If the BBC proceeds with legal action, it may set a precedent for other media organizations seeking to assert control over the use of their digital content in the age of artificial intelligence.
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