Perplexity AI has launched a revenue-sharing model for publishers, following over a month of plagiarism allegations. Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel, and WordPress.com are the initial participants in the company’s “Publishers Program.”
In June, Forbes accused Perplexity AI’s Pages tool of publishing a plagiarized version of its paywalled original reporting, with only a small “F” logo at the bottom as attribution.
Weeks later, Wired also reported that Perplexity had plagiarized Wired stories, and that an IP address linked to Perplexity had visited Wired’s parent company’s websites over 800 times in three months.
The AI-focused startup, which concentrates on AI-powered search and intends to rival Google, secured fresh funding in April at a valuation surpassing $1 billion — twice its valuation from three months earlier.
Under the new partner program, Perplexity will share a flat percentage of the advertising revenue generated from citing a publisher’s articles in its answers.
The percentage is calculated on a per-article basis, meaning if three articles from one publisher are used in a single answer, the partner will receive “triple the revenue share.” Perplexity’s chief business officer confirmed the flat rate is a double-digit percentage, though he declined to provide specifics.
Additionally, more than a dozen publishers, including major newspaper dailies and their parent companies, expressed interest in the program less than two hours after its debut.
The company aims to have 30 publishers signed up by the end of the year, and Perplexity is seeking to collaborate with some of the publishers’ ad sales teams so they can sell ads against all of Perplexity’s inventory.
“Perplexity will share revenue with publishers when their content is referenced, and will provide publishers with API credits and analytics through a partnership with ScalePost.ai to offer deeper insights into how Perplexity cites their content,” Perplexity stated in a blog post.
Perplexity has been engaging with publishers since January and finalized its revenue-sharing program in the first quarter of 2024.
Five Perplexity employees are dedicated to the program, which grew out of conversations about integrating Perplexity’s APIs and technology into publishers’ products.
Perplexity’s new program comes amid an increasingly heated battle between AI startups and some media outlets and creators, as many publications aggressively try to protect their businesses in the age of AI-generated content.
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