According to Bloomberg, Apple's mergers boss Adrian Perica has been gossiping with services supremo Eddy Cue and other senior suits about buying Perplexity outright.
If this happens it might give Apple a foot in the door with AI by buying it without having to anything tricky like being inovative. If Apple buys Perplexity and uses its tech to slap an AI-powered search engine onto Siri it can reassure Apple fanboys that it did invent it in the first place.
Apparently, it’s still early doors. Jobs' Mob hasn’t even tabled a formal offer and might just opt for a joint venture instead. Either way, Apple hopes Perplexity’s tech can be jammed into Siri, which is currently so dense it couldn’t outwit a toaster.
Cue actually admitted under oath during the ongoing Google search antitrust trial that Apple had flirted with Perplexity about shoving it into Safari. This, of course, is the same Safari that defaults to Google Search in return for tens of billions of dollars. If the regulators pull the plug on that gravy train, buying Perplexity might be Apple’s only way to cobble together a Plan B.
The real reason Apple is kicking the tyres on Perplexity is that it is woefully behind in AI. Like Meta, Jobs’ Mob is panic-hiring anyone who’s read a neural net textbook. Bloomberg reckons Apple is even trying to poach Daniel Gross from Safe Superintelligence Inc. The company had to delay launching its fancy new Siri just months ago, proof that its much-hyped Apple Intelligence pitch is running out of steam.
However, Apple might find Perplexity a poisoned chalace. The outfit is in hot water after the BBC accused it of nicking its content without permission. The broadcaster said Perplexity published BBC reporting without any links or credit, in what it called a “clear breach of copyright.”
In a letter to Perplexity chief Aravind Srinivas seen by the Financial Times, the British national broadcaster says it has evidence that the US start-up’s “default AI model” was “trained using BBC content”.
The letter states it could seek an injunction unless the San Francisco-based company ceases scraping all BBC content, deletes any copies of the broadcaster’s material held for the purposes of developing its AI systems, and provides “a proposal for financial compensation” for the alleged infringement of its intellectual property so far.
The move is the first time that the British broadcaster has sought to tackle AI companies over this matter, and reflects growing concerns that its content, much of which is freely and easily available as a public sector broadcaster, is being widely ripped off.
Perplexity said the BBC’s claims were “manipulative and opportunistic” and that it had “a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law. With that arrogant tone it sounds like it is getting reading to be part of the Apple Empire already.
