The Decoder
Perplexity AI has added more than a dozen international media partners to its publisher program.
As part of these partnerships, Perplexity will share advertising revenue with publishers and give them access to its APIs, developer tools, and free Enterprise Pro licenses. The company hired Jessica Chan, who previously ran content partnerships at LinkedIn, to manage the growing program.
The expanded publisher program now includes ADWEEK, Blavity, DPReview, Gear Patrol, Lee Enterprises, Los Angeles Times, MediaLab, Mexico News Daily, Minkabu Infonoid, NewsPicks, Prisa Media, RTL Germany brands stern and ntv, and World History Encyclopedia, joining existing partners such as TIME, Fortune, and Der Spiegel.
Legal pressures drive media deals
These partnerships come as AI companies face legal questions about using journalistic content. AI search engines like Perplexity need agreements with publishers to avoid potential lawsuits over unauthorized content use, particularly when their AI systems paraphrase sources.
Journalism scholar Jeff Jarvis calls such payments hush money and “pure lobbying.” The issue creates an uneven playing field: while major media companies may benefit from these deals in the short term, smaller publishers without agreements risk falling behind.
The power imbalance could worsen as platforms like Perplexity gain more influence. Even publishers with existing agreements might become overly dependent on these platforms—something the industry has already experienced with Google.
