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Cond\u00e9 Nast, the media conglomerate that owns publications such as The New Yorker<\/em>, Vogue<\/em> and Wired<\/em>, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI-powered search startup Perplexity, according<\/a> to The Information<\/em>. The letter, which was sent on Monday, demands that Perplexity stop using content from Cond\u00e9 Nast publications in its AI-generated responses and accused the startup of plagiarism.<\/p>\n The move makes Cond\u00e9 Nast the latest in a growing list of publishers taking a stand against the unauthorized use of their content by AI companies, and comes a month after similar action<\/a> taken by Forbes<\/em>. Perplexity and Cond\u00e9 Nast did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Engadget.<\/p>\n Perplexity, a San Francisco-based startup, is valued at $3 billion and backed by high-profile investors including the Jeff Bezos family fund and NVIDIA, has recently come under scrutiny for not respecting copyright and ripping off content to feed its AI-generated responses. The controversy surrounding the company extends beyond copyright concerns.<\/p>\n A recent investigation from Wired<\/em> reveled<\/a> that the startup\u2019s web crawlers do not respect robots.txt, a type of file that website owners can use to block bots from scraping their content. Last month, Amazon Web Services reportedly launched<\/a> an investigation to determine whether the startup broke its rules around web scraping. Shortly after, a report<\/a> from Reuters<\/em> showed that Perplexity was just one of the many AI companies ignoring robots.txt.<\/p>\n This practice has sparked concerns<\/a> about the ethical and legal implications of AI development and its impact on content creators and publishers. In response, Perplexity executives have talked<\/a> about starting a revenue-sharing program with publishers, although it is still unclear what its terms will be.<\/p>\n Cond\u00e9 Nast CEO Roger Lynch has warned<\/a> that \u201cmany\u201d media companies could face financial ruin by the time it would take for litigation against generative AI companies to conclude. Lynch has called upon Congress to take \u201cimmediate action\u201d by asking AI companies to compensate publishers for the use of their content and striking licensing deals in the future. Earlier this month, three senators introduced<\/a> the COPIED Act, a bill that aims to protect journalists, artists and songwriters from AI companies using their content to train AI models.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n