Perplexity AI Introduces Revenue-Sharing Program for Publishers Amid Plagiarism Concerns
Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence-powered search engine startup, has announced a new revenue-sharing program for publishers in response to recent plagiarism accusations. The “Publishers Program” aims to compensate media outlets and content platforms when their content is used to generate answers for user queries.
The program’s initial partners include prominent names such as Time, Fortune, Der Spiegel, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com. Under this initiative, publishers will receive a share of advertising revenue when Perplexity cites their content in response to user questions.
Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, stated that the revenue share will be a “double-digit percentage” on a per-article basis. This means that if multiple articles from a single publisher are used in one answer, the partner would receive multiple shares of the revenue.
The announcement comes following controversy in June when Forbes accused Perplexity of plagiarizing its paywalled content without proper attribution. Subsequently, Wired reported similar findings of plagiarism and unauthorized access to their content.
As part of the program, Perplexity will offer partners free access to its APIs and developer support, allowing them to create custom answer engines on their own websites. Publishers will also receive access to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro offering for their employees and analytics insights through ScalePost.ai.
Perplexity plans to introduce advertising through a new “related questions” feature in the coming months. Brands will be able to pay for specific follow-up questions to appear in the answer engine interface and on Pages.
While Shevelenko claims that work on this program began in January, the timing of the announcement suggests it may also serve as a response to the recent plagiarism allegations. The company aims to have 30 publishers enrolled by the end of the year and is exploring partnerships with publishers’ ad sales teams.
This move by Perplexity represents a shift in the AI search landscape, as companies grapple with concerns over content usage and fair compensation for publishers. It remains to be seen how effective this program will be in addressing the ongoing tensions between AI companies and media outlets in the rapidly evolving digital content ecosystem.
