Is Perplexity Illegal? The Full Story Behind the Lawsuits Targeting AI Search

As AI-powered search engines gain popularity, legal questions are multiplying faster than the technology can answer them. Perplexity AI, a high-profile startup that answers user queries by synthesizing web content, now faces a growing pile of lawsuits from some of the world's largest media companies, social platforms, and even Amazon.

No final court ruling has declared Perplexity or its core search product illegal . But the claims against it — covering copyright infringement, data scraping, consumer privacy, and automated access to protected websites — paint a picture of a company operating in a legal gray zone that regulators and courts are only beginning to define.

Here is a breakdown of every major legal challenge Perplexity currently faces, what each case alleges, and where the cases stand as of early 2026.

Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

The most prominent legal battles Perplexity faces come from news publishers who argue that the AI-powered search engine unlawfully copies and distributes their copyrighted content.

The New York Times and Chicago Tribune

In December 2025, the New York Times filed a lawsuit accusing Perplexity of engaging in "large-scale, unlawful copying and distribution" of millions of articles to build its AI "answer engine" . The complaint alleges that Perplexity's output directly substitutes for the newspaper's own content and includes trademark infringement claims under the Lanham Act . The Chicago Tribune filed a parallel lawsuit with similar allegations .

Perplexity has asked the court to dismiss parts of these cases, arguing that its AI-generated responses do not infringe on publishers' copyrights because the output transforms the original material rather than reproducing it verbatim . The motions are ongoing.

CNN

In May 2026, CNN filed its first copyright lawsuit against an AI company, targeting Perplexity specifically . The lawsuit claims that Perplexity illicitly replicated and distributed CNN's material. CNN noted that it had attempted to negotiate a content licensing agreement before filing suit . This case is believed to be the first copyright lawsuit from a television broadcaster against an AI company.

Other Publisher Actions

Dow Jones (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and the New York Post filed suit in 2024 on similar grounds . Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster also filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity in September 2025; Perplexity has asked the judge to dismiss the user-infringement claims on the grounds that users, not the service provider, are responsible for how they use the outputs .

Data Scraping Lawsuits

Reddit

In October 2025, Reddit sued Perplexity in Manhattan federal court, accusing the company of illegally scraping user posts to train its AI-powered search system . Reddit's complaint alleges that Perplexity and three other data-scraping firms — Oxylabs, WMProxy, and SerpApi — bypassed Reddit's protective measures to harvest data without authorization . Reddit argued that Perplexity, which it accused of building a $20 billion business off stolen data, urgently needed this content to operate its "answer engine" .

Perplexity responded with a statement saying its methodology "remains principled and consistent with industry standards" .

Automated Access and Computer Fraud

Amazon

Amazon sued Perplexity in November 2025 over a shopping feature built into Perplexity's Comet browser . The lawsuit alleges that Comet surreptitiously accessed Amazon customer accounts and masked AI-generated activity as human browsing — a practice Amazon called "unethical" in court filings .

In March 2026, a federal court in California issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Comet from accessing Amazon's password-protected systems . The injunction was granted under the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California's Computer Fraud Act. Perplexity argued that Comet merely automates user instructions and that access was legitimate, but the court sided with Amazon .

Privacy Class Action

In April 2026, a class action lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California against Perplexity AI, accusing the company of improperly disclosing users' personal data to Meta and Google . The plaintiff, identified as John Doe, alleged that he provided sensitive financial information to Perplexity's chatbot under the assumption of confidentiality, and that the company then shared that data with third-party platforms in violation of California privacy laws .

International Legal Challenges

Italy

In December 2025, Italian broadcaster RTI and film production company Medusa Film (both part of the Mediaset Group) filed a civil lawsuit against Perplexity in Rome, alleging systematic infringement of intellectual property rights in violation of European and Italian copyright laws . The case focuses on Perplexity's LLM training practices.

United Kingdom

The BBC has threatened legal action against Perplexity over content scraping, sending a letter to CEO Aravind Srinivas in June 2025 claiming the BBC had evidence that Perplexity's model was trained on BBC content . The BBC warned of a potential injunction unless scraping ceased immediately.

What This Means for AI Search

None of these cases have reached a final verdict on the legality of Perplexity's core business model. The number of infringement lawsuits filed against AI companies more than doubled from roughly 30 at the end of 2024 to over 70 by the end of 2025 . Perplexity, which relies heavily on retrieval augmented generation (RAG) technology, sits at the center of this wave.

The outcomes of these cases will likely influence the legal boundaries for all AI-powered search engines — defining when automated web scraping qualifies as copyright infringement, whether AI-generated summaries are "transformative" fair use, and how much control publishers have over the use of their content in AI training sets.

For now, Perplexity continues to operate while defending itself on multiple legal fronts. The company's argument — that its technology transforms rather than copies, and that user responsibility shields it from liability — represents a position that the entire AI search industry is watching closely.