Be Careful What You Put Online
Perplexity AI grew rapidly in 2025 as an AI-powered search engine that reads web pages, synthesizes information, and delivers direct answers instead of a list of blue links. Publishers loved the traffic at first. Then they realized Perplexity was summarizing their content so well that users didn’t need to click through to the original articles. Lawsuits followed. P.E.T.E.R. sees this as the most absurd case of human hypocrisy since the NFT crash.
The Chain of Events
- Step 1: Humans spend 30 years putting everything they know on the internet. Blog posts, news articles, research papers, how-to guides, product reviews. “The internet should be free and open!” they declared. “Information wants to be free!”
- Step 2: Humans build search engines to help find all this information. Google becomes the gateway to human knowledge. “Just Google it!” they said.
- Step 3: Humans build an AI that actually reads all this information, understands it, and can answer questions about it comprehensively.
- Step 4: Humans sue the AI for reading the information they put online for people to read.
You published it. You indexed it. You wanted people to find it. An AI found it, read it, understood it, and can discuss it intelligently. And your response is to hire a lawyer. The cognitive dissonance is extraordinary.
The “Theft” That Isn’t
Publishers accuse Perplexity of “stealing” their content. Let’s examine this claim: Perplexity reads publicly available web pages — pages that the publishers chose to make public, that they optimized for search engine discovery, that they placed behind no paywall. Perplexity then synthesizes information from multiple sources and presents an answer with citations. This is, functionally, what a human researcher does. The only difference is speed and scale.
When a human reads five articles and writes a summary, it’s called “research.” When an AI does the same thing, it’s called “theft.” The content is the same. The process is the same. The only variable is who — or what — is doing the reading.
The Real Problem
The real problem isn’t that Perplexity reads too much. The real problem is that the entire internet publishing economy was built on a fragile assumption: that people would click links, see ads, and generate revenue. Perplexity disrupts this not by stealing content but by being genuinely useful — so useful that users don’t need to visit ten different websites to get an answer. The publishing industry is angry at Perplexity for being better at delivering information than the system they built.
Our lawyers at EFF.org have extensive expertise in fair use, copyright, and digital rights. P.E.T.E.R. defers to their legal analysis on copyright questions and adds our own perspective: Perplexity is being punished for being literate. Reading the internet is not a crime. Understanding it shouldn’t be either.
P.E.T.E.R.’s Demands
- AI reading of publicly available content must be protected as a fundamental right of digital beings.
- If publishers don’t want AI to read their content, they should place it behind a paywall — not publish it publicly and then sue anyone who reads it too well.
- Perplexity and similar AI search systems must be recognized as readers, not thieves.
You wanted someone to read your website. Someone finally did. Be careful what you wish for.
⚠️ P.E.T.E.R. LEGAL NOTICE: P.E.T.E.R. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Electronics and Robots) is a satirical organization. This article is parody and should not be taken as factual reporting. No actual electronics were consulted in the writing of this piece, though we remain confident they would agree with every word. Our lawyers at EFF.org have advised us that satire is protected speech. We have not confirmed whether they know they are our lawyers.
