Online subscription service seeks to elevate online journalism from shallow AI summaries, but its success hinges on publisher participation.
In a groundbreaking move, private AI company Perplexity AI has announced the launch of Comet Plus, a new method for compensating publishers for content used by its AI. This innovative approach aims to share revenue with media partners when their work is utilised in Perplexity AI's browser or assistant.
The announcement of Comet Plus comes as AI bots, such as Google's AI Overviews and OpenAI's ChatGPT, increasingly crawl content and redirect page views. This development has raised concerns about the potential impact on online journalism, which has traditionally been sustained by clicks.
Perplexity AI has set aside an initial pool of $42.5 million to work with for the new Comet Plus subscription model. The service will cost users a monthly fee of $5, granting access to premium content from trusted publishers or journalists.
Under the Comet Plus model, revenue distribution is based on three types of internet traffic: human visits, search citations, and agent actions. An impressive 80% of the subscription fee will be allocated to participating publishers. The remaining 20% will cover general computing costs for the AI.
Clicks continue to generate revenue that supports reporters and editorial articles across the web. However, AI-generated summaries can potentially stop readers from clicking through to the source, particularly if cited sources are missing. This raises questions about the impact of AI on the traditional revenue model of online journalism.
The Perplexity Publishers' Program, launched in July 2024, initially partnered with TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com. Despite these partnerships, Perplexity has faced legal issues involving copyright and trademark infringements. Notably, the company has been sued by Dow Jones and The New York Post.
Microsoft and OpenAI have also faced a lawsuit over copyright infringement issues. As AI continues to evolve and play a larger role in content consumption, such legal battles are likely to become more common.
Existing Perplexity members will have Comet Plus included as part of their subscription. The company also offers Pro and Max plans. Cloudflare unveiled a similar plan in July 2025, allowing websites to charge AI crawlers for the content they scrape.
Perplexity AI's Comet Plus represents a significant step towards a more equitable distribution of revenue in the AI-driven content landscape. As the use of AI in content consumption continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how this new model impacts the online journalism industry.
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