Perplexity offers publishers a revenue-sharing plan for their new AI search engine.

In an effort to address complaints and legal action from certain media outlets regarding the usage of their work, Perplexity AI Inc. is giving publishers a cut of the money their articles bring in.

According to Chief Executive Officer Aravind Srinivas, the startup, which is developing an AI search engine to rival Google, has set aside $42.5 million to be divided among participating publishers.

He stated that although AI is making the internet better, publishers still need to be compensated. Therefore, we believe that this is the best course of action, and we are willing to make changes as needed.

artificial intelligence firms and the media sector have argued over worries that AI-generated comments from programs like Google’s AI Overviews and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have reduced key website traffic.

In an interview, Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, described the conventional paradigm, in which media outlets depend on clicks and web traffic, as “an old model.” “Our goal is to establish a new benchmark for remuneration,” she stated.

In the new program, publishers will be able to earn money when their content receives web traffic through Perplexity’s Comet internet browser, appears in search queries on Comet and when it’s used to complete tasks by Comet’s AI assistant.

Comet Plus, a new membership tier for the Comet browser that Srinivas compared to Apple News, generates the income needed to pay publishers salaries. In Perplexity’s new service, users will pay $5 per month to access a carefully chosen selection of content from the publishers. Perplexity will keep the remaining money, while publishers will receive 80%.

While AI companies like OpenAI and Google have made bespoke multimillion dollar deals with major publishers to licence and distribute content, Perplexity is one of the first AI startups to introduce a new method of sharing revenue based on how often content appears or assists in user queries.

Chan declined to say which publishers are already participating in the program, but said that Perplexity is in talks with previous media partners. The startup has previously teamed up with outlets like Time, The Los Angeles Times and Fortune on a program for sharing ad revenue.

Perplexity has also scuffled with some media organisations, with outlets like Forbes and Condé Nast accusing the company of using their content in AI news summaries without permission. The startup also lost a bid last week to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by News Corp.’s Dow Jones and the New York Post.

Speaking in a statement, Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said, “We are confident AI companies will win all of these lawsuits.” “We hope that the law is resolved quickly so that AI can benefit everyone.”

Perplexity has also been accused by cybersecurity firm Cloudflare Inc. of crawling and extracting data from websites by getting beyond barriers intended to prevent such behavior. Perplexity has said that since its AI assistant accesses specific websites upon a user’s request rather than trawling the internet, it shouldn’t be bound by the same regulations.

Srinivas explained that using AI agents, like Perplexity’s helper, to “go and read something on their behalf” is not the same as using a web crawler, which gathers data and use it to train a new AI Model.

Perplexity, which raised $100 million at a $18 billion valuation last month, also made waves recently with a $34.5 billion offer to acquire Google Chrome, as the search giant faces a potential requirement to sell the web tool in US anti-trust proceedings. According to Srinivas, Perplexity has “well-funded people who want to back us,” despite some detractors dismissing the bid as being unimportant.

“Google has not responded to us yet,” he stated.

He stated, “We have not received a response from Google yet.”