Perplexity has cooked up a brand new method to pay publishers for his or her content material

Perplexity is launching a brand new revenue-sharing plan for publishers that can pay them each time its AI assistants use an article to reply a query, The Wall Street Journal reports. Perplexity is launching the plan (and partially paying for it) with a brand new Comet Plus subscription that offers subscribers entry “to premium content material from a gaggle of trusted publishers and journalists.”

Comet Plus prices $5 monthly, and based mostly on Perplexity’s description, it is primarily designed to account for the actions its Comet Agent (included within the Comet browser) takes on web sites, which are not thought of in current writer offers. “If you ask Perplexity to synthesize latest protection of an business development, that is listed visitors,” the corporate writes. “When Comet Assistant scans your calendar and suggests articles related to your day’s conferences, that is agent visitors.”

The corporate’s existing Publisher Program, which counts publications like TIME and Fortune as individuals, shares advert income based mostly on the visitors a Perplexity search is stealing away by offering a abstract of an article. The cash shared via Comet Plus will presumably account for what’s misplaced when an AI agent visits a webpage in your behalf, zooming previous adverts you’d usually see or hear.

Publishers will get 80 % of the income of Comet Plus, in response to Perplexity, with the remaining 20 % allotted to “compute.” The Wall Avenue Journal writes that Perplexity will initially pay taking part publishers out of a “$42.5 million income pool” that can increase over time, presumably as sign-ups develop for Comet Plus, and the Comet internet browser turns into obtainable to extra individuals. That beginning sum seemingly takes into consideration Perplexity’s current Professional and Max subscribers, who will obtain Comet Plus as a part of their subscriptions and are paying into the revenue-sharing scheme by default.

It sounds beneficiant on its face, and possibly with a big sufficient quantity of subscribers will probably be, however 80 % of $5 is $4. That is $4 that can presumably unlock limitless entry to a publication’s complete library of content material. Most newspapers cost wherever from $20 to $30 monthly to entry all of their articles. Why would they accept much less?

It is not clear if this plan replaces Perplexity’s current Writer Program, or will exist alongside it. It is also onerous to say if not paying for Comet Plus will change the standard of responses you obtain in Comet or Perplexity. Engadget has contacted Perplexity for extra info and can replace this text if we hear again.

Perplexity seemingly would not be exploring new revenue-sharing plans if it hadn’t already been caught plagiarizing articles within the first place. The corporate needs its agentic browser to be successful, and that ideally requires a specific amount of participation from the individuals who create the articles, photographs, and movies brokers browse. It stays to be seen if Comet Plus is the form of association that can make publishers play ball.