Perplexity AI announced its Publishers' Program

Perplexity AI has shared more about the revenue-sharing program that surfaced as the company was subject to stern criticism about its web scraping practices after Forbes accused Perplexity of plagiarizing some of its content. At the same time, WIRED published its investigation on the company's use of anonymous third-party web scrapers to bypass websites' Robots Exclusion Protocol policies. The timing has led to the conclusion that Perplexity may be coming forward with the Publishers' Program to divert attention from the criticism. Perplexity AI has since confirmed that it has been planning this since January, before the incidents with Forbes and WIRED.

The Publishers' Program will debut with TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com as Perplexity's first batch of partners. As part of the Program, these outlets will be entitled to revenue sharing as Perplexity begins to sell advertisement space in its follow-up questions feature in the search engine and Pages. According to Perplexity brands will be able to pay to ask specific follow-up questions on the search engine and Perplexity Pages. Any revenue Perplexity earns from users interacting with those questions will be shared with the publishers referenced in the question's answer.

Additionally, Perplexity has started working with ScalePost.ai, a platform that enables collaborations between AI companies and publishers. ScalePost.ai also provides analytics for publishers which will deliver insights on topics including user intent and how Perplexity cites its partners' content. Perplexity AI will also grant its partners access to its LLM APIs and developer support so the outlets can build personalized AI experiences within their websites. The company also plans to provide all its partners' employees with a one-year Enterprise Pro plan free of charge.

Meanwhile, Perplexity AI does not appear to be about to stop its web scraping practices anytime soon. Although the Publishers' Program is undoubtedly a step toward fairer collaboration between AI companies and news publishers, the details of how the revenue-sharing part of the deal will work are still scarce, meaning it will be some time before we can tell how effective the program is.