On that day, it pushed me a story about a new drone company from Eric Schmidt. I recognized the story. Forbes had reported it exclusively, earlier in the week,

On that day, it pushed me a story about a new drone company from Eric Schmidt. I recognized the story. Forbes had reported it exclusively, earlier in the week, but it had been locked behind a paywall. The image on Perplexity’s story looked identical to one from Forbes. The language and structure were quite similar. It was effectively the same story, but freely available to anyone on the internet. I texted a friend who had edited the original story to ask if Forbes had a deal with the startup to republish its content. But there was no deal. He was shocked and furious and, well, perplexed. He wasn’t alone. Forbes, the New York Times, and Condé Nast have now all sent the company cease-and-desist orders. News Corp is suing for damages. Welcome to the next version of Google's mission to index all the world's knowledge and make money by serving ads against it, I guess, in this brave new world there doesn't need to even be the tiniest chance of a single cent getting to the person who wrote up the story.