Perplexity AI and Getty Images Sign Multi-Year Content Licensing Agreement

AI search startup Perplexity has entered into a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images, granting it permission to feature Getty's images within its AI-powered search and discovery platforms. This partnership represents a significant shift for the startup, which has faced accusations of content scraping and plagiarism, and indicates a move toward establishing more formal content collaborations.

A source familiar with the arrangement informed TechCrunch that Perplexity and Getty have been collaborating for over a year. Although never publicly announced, Getty participated in Perplexity’s Publishers’ Program, an initiative to share advertising revenue with publishers when their content appears in search results.

The current agreement is a new arrangement. A source told TechCrunch it is not a traditional lump-sum licensing deal, as Perplexity does not train its own foundational models, though further details on the terms were not disclosed.

Perplexity’s deal with Getty appears to legitimize some of the startup’s prior use of Getty’s stock photos. Over the past year, Perplexity has faced a series of plagiarism allegations from multiple news outlets. In one instance, the company was criticized for reproducing content, including a Getty image, from a Wall Street Journal article.

At the time, several media organizations questioned whether Perplexity’s use of such images amounted to copyright infringement. Last year, a source indicated to TechCrunch that Perplexity was negotiating an agreement with Getty, though the deal could not be confirmed despite multiple attempts to contact the stock image company.

More recently, in October, Reddit filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, accusing the startup of “industrial-scale, unlawful” content scraping and bypassing technical measures to access data. Reddit has an existing data licensing agreement with OpenAI.

Perplexity states that its Getty partnership will enhance how images are displayed in search results, including proper credits and links back to the original source.

Nick Unsworth, Getty’s Vice President of Strategic Development, commented that the agreement “recognizes the importance of properly attributed consent and its value in improving AI-powered products.”

“Attribution and accuracy are essential to how people comprehend the world in the age of AI,” said Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s Head of Content and Publisher Partnerships, in a statement. “Together, we’re helping users discover answers through compelling visual storytelling while ensuring they always know the origin of the content and its creators.”

Perplexity’s focus on attribution is part of its broader strategy to counter copyright claims by asserting that its use of publisher content—including material behind paywalls or content publishers have explicitly asked not to be scraped—qualifies as “fair use,” since publicly available facts are not subject to copyright.