Perplexity has announced the launch of its Publishers' Program, including an advertising revenue-sharing plan as well as offers of a free year of their enterprise subscription with media publishers, which seems like a response to the plagiarism controversy.
This program has enlisted several prominent partners, including Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and Automattic (WordPress.com). When a user queries in Perplexity’s platform incorporates content from these publishers, a portion of the generated ad revenue will be distributed to them.
Background on Plagiarism Accusations
The motivation behind this new initiative stems from a series of plagiarism accusations that have surfaced against Perplexity.
The controversy began when Forbes reported that one of its paywalled articles had been plagiarized within Perplexity’s Pages tool, which produces content based on user prompts. The accused version failed to give proper attribution beyond a small logo indicating its source.
Following this incident, Wired published its investigation, revealing instances of Perplexity allegedly paraphrasing its articles without adequate attribution.
The impact of these accusations has been significant, straining relationships between the AI company and the publishing community. Affected publishers responded with demands for accountability and fair compensation for their content, further intensifying discussions about ethical practices in AI-generated content.
Financial Terms and Conditions
Perplexity has outlined the financial terms and conditions of the Publishers' Program in response to the plagiarism allegations. The revenue-sharing agreement will provide publishers with a flat-rate percentage of advertising income generated from their content. This percentage applies on a per-article basis, meaning that the revenue share increases accordingly if multiple articles from the same publisher are cited in a single response.
Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, has disclosed that the revenue share will be a double-digit percentage, although specific figures have not been made public.
Additionally, the company is offering cash advances to publishers as it develops a reliable advertising model, significantly differentiating its approach from other firms in the sector. Google, described by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg as “It’s a much better revenue split than Google, which is zero”, which typically provides no revenue share to publishers.
The industry's response has been cautiously optimistic. Major publishing operations have expressed interest in collaborating with Perplexity, symbolizing a potential shift in how AI and media companies can coexist beneficially.
However, there remain concerns regarding payment adequacy and whether this approach will produce meaningful benefits for all publishers, particularly smaller organizations that may not have the same negotiating power.
Despite the controversy surrounding plagiarism, some industry experts view the revenue-sharing program as a positive step toward formalizing relationships between AI firms and content creators. While the medium- to long-term implications of these alliances are still unclear, the willingness of Perplexity to share ad revenue may set a precedent in the media landscape where ethical considerations in AI applications continue to be debated.