Perplexity AI Commits $42.5 Million to Publisher Revenue Share Program Amid Legal Challenges

San Francisco – Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine, has launched a new publisher revenue share program, allocating $42.5 million to compensate media organizations whose content is utilized by its platforms. The initiative, which includes a subscription-based model, comes as the company navigates ongoing legal actions from various media entities concerning copyright infringement.

The program introduces Comet Plus, a new $5 per month subscription tier for Perplexity's Comet web browser. Under this model, publishers will receive 80% of the revenue generated when their content appears in Comet search results, drives traffic to their websites via the browser, or is used by Comet’s AI assistant to complete user tasks. Perplexity will retain the remaining 20% of the subscription revenue. This approach aims to establish a usage-based compensation model, differing from the flat-fee licensing deals pursued by other AI companies.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas stated that the goal is to foster a "better internet" through AI while ensuring fair compensation for publishers. Jessica Chan, Perplexity's head of publisher partnerships, emphasized that the traditional web traffic and click-based monetization model is outdated, and the company seeks to set a "new standard for compensation."

The announcement arrives amidst significant legal pressure on Perplexity. The company is currently facing a copyright infringement lawsuit from News Corp subsidiaries Dow Jones and the New York Post, which alleges "massive freeriding" on their copyrighted content. Additionally, the BBC has threatened legal action, claiming Perplexity's AI model was trained using its content without permission and reproduced verbatim sections. Perplexity has maintained confidence in winning these lawsuits, arguing its AI assistant accesses pages at user request rather than traditional crawling for model training.

This revenue-sharing program builds on Perplexity's existing publisher initiatives, which previously focused on ad revenue sharing. Initial partners for earlier programs included TIME, Fortune, and Der Spiegel. The expansion into subscription revenue aims to address concerns from publishers who argue that AI models divert traffic and revenue away from their original content.