Perplexity strikes multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images 

AI hunt startup Perplexity has signed a multi-year licensing woody with Getty Images, which gives it support to show images from Getty crossed its AI-powered hunt and find tools. The woody marks a notable displacement for the company, which has been deed by allegations of contented scraping and plagiarism, and signals an effort to found much ceremonial contented partnerships. 

Perplexity and Getty person been moving unneurotic for much than a year, a root acquainted with the woody told TechCrunch. Though it was ne'er announced, Getty was portion of Perplexity’s Publishers’ Program, a program to stock advertisement gross with publishers erstwhile their contented surfaced successful a hunt query, the root said.  

Today’s statement is simply a caller deal. A root told TechCrunch it’s not a accepted lump sum licensing deal, since Perplexity doesn’t bid its ain foundational models, but would not elaborate connected the terms.

Perplexity’s statement with Getty appears to legitimize immoderate of the startup’s erstwhile usage of Getty’s banal photos. Perplexity came nether occurrence past twelvemonth for a series of plagiarism accusations from several quality organizations. In 1 case, the startup was called retired for pulling contented from a Wall Street Journal article, including the Getty photograph in that piece.  

At the time, respective outlets questioned whether Perplexity’s usage of the images constituted copyright infringement. A root past twelvemonth told TechCrunch that Perplexity was moving connected an statement with Getty, but we were incapable to corroborate the woody aft reaching retired to banal representation elephantine respective times.  

More recently, Reddit sued Perplexity successful October, alleging “industrial-scale, unlawful” scraping of idiosyncratic contented and circumventing method measures to entree data. Reddit has a data licensing statement with OpenAI. 

Perplexity says its Getty woody volition assistance it amended show images and see credits with links backmost to the archetypal root whenever images amusement up successful hunt results. 

Nick Unsworth, vice president of strategical improvement astatine Getty, said the statement “acknowledges the value of decently attributed consent and its worth successful enhancing AI-powered products.” 

“Attribution and accuracy are cardinal to however radical should recognize the satellite successful an property of AI,” Jessica Chan, caput of contented and steadfast partnerships astatine Perplexity, said successful a statement. “Together, we’re helping radical observe answers done almighty ocular storytelling portion ensuring they ever cognize wherever that contented comes from and who created it.” 

Perplexity’s accent connected attribution is portion of its strategy of defending against copyright accusations by arguing its usage of steadfast contented – including contented down a paywall oregon that publishers person explicitly indicated they don’t privation scraped – constitutes “fair use” due to the fact that publically disposable facts are not copyrightable.