The boss of controversial startup Perplexity AI made a strange offer to help The New York Times Technical workers are on strike – Just weeks later the Gray Lady threatened to sue the company for “unlawful use” of its articles.
Arvind Srinivas, CEO of the Jeff Bezos-backed startup, raised eyebrows Monday with his response to a post on Times publisher AG Sulzberger’s Ax, assuring employees that the work stoppage would not impact the publication’s Election Day coverage.
Srinivas wrote on X, “Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes – sad to see this.”
“Perplexity is ready to help ensure the coverage you need is available to everyone during the election. DM me here anytime.”
Srinivas was quick to clarify his comments after facing opposition that his proposal was tantamount to crossing the picket line of the 600-strong tech guild, which had gone on strike a day before the elections.
Srinivas wrote, “Clearly, the offer was not meant to ‘replace’ journalists or engineers with AI, but to provide technical basic support on a high-traffic day.”
A Perplexity spokesperson referred Srinivas to X’s comments to The Post.
The Times and the Times Tech Guild were not immediately available for comment.
New York-based reporter Andy Hirshfeld wrote on
Another user accused Srinivas of “disgusting boot licking behaviour”.
Last month, lawyers for the Times sent Perplexity AI a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop using its content.
In its letter to the tech firm challenging Google’s search engine, the Times wrote, “Using The Times’s expressive, carefully written and researched and edited journalism without authorization unfairly discredits Perplexity and its business partners.” Has been enriched.” dominance.
The letter, which alleged that Perplexity circumvented anti-scraping and anti-bot protections against the use of its content, gave the company an October 30 deadline to respond.
A week after the Times threatened legal action, The Post and Dow Jones filed suit Copyright infringement allegation against Perplexity.
“Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users with accurate and up-to-date news and information on a platform that, in Perplexity’s own words, allows users to ‘skip links’ to the original publishers’ websites. Allows,” the companies said in the federal lawsuit.
“Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by creating massive amounts of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and significant revenues away from those copyright holders.”
The Post and Dow Jones, both of which are subsidiaries of News Corp., said in their filing that they want to redress Perplexity’s “brazen scheme to compete for readers while freeriding on the valuable content produced by publishers.” “
Meanwhile, members of the tech guild resumed picketing outside the Times offices in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning.
“We know it’s a difficult day for our members to be on strike, but we want to be clear: We’re here because of the decisions of @NYTimes management,” the union wrote in an ex-post Tuesday.
A Times spokesperson told The Post on Monday: “We want to continue to work with the Tech Guild to reach a fair contract that takes into account that they are already the highest paid at the company.” We are among the individual contributors and journalism is our top priority. ,
