In a letter addressed to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, the BBC accused the company of scraping its online material without consent and warned of possible legal consequences if its demands were not met.

Specifically, the BBC is asking for the deletion of all copies of its content used for training purposes, an end to the practice, and a proposal for financial compensation. Failure to comply, it says, could lead to an injunction.

This escalation places Perplexity at the centre of a deepening rift between traditional media outlets and tech companies leveraging journalistic content to power artificial intelligence systems.

“The BBC’s letter outlines a potential injunction unless Perplexity halts its content scraping activities, purges existing data from its models, and presents a proposal for financial compensation,” reported Financial Times, which had access to the communication.

Perplexity’s reaction was quick as it said in a statement also quoted by FT, “The BBC’s claims are manipulative and opportunistic,” adding that the broadcaster “has a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.”

This isn’t the first time Perplexity has drawn the ire of publishers. In October 2024, The New York Times served the company with a cease-and-desist notice over similar allegations. The paper demanded a full stop to the use of its articles in AI training and sought answers on how Perplexity bypassed anti-scraping mechanisms.

Other major publishers such as Forbes, Wired, and Axel Springer have had similar complaints. While Perplexity insists it is indexing publicly accessible content rather than scraping it for training, companies are not convinced.

To manage the case, Perplexity launched a Publishers Program in mid-2024, offering revenue-sharing arrangements to selected media outlets.

Among the early participants are TIME, Der Spiegel, The Texas Tribune, and Fortune. These partners receive a share of ad revenue whenever their content appears in responses generated by the platform.

We don’t know yet if the BBC was ever approached to join the scheme—or declined.

The broadcaster’s demand is a defensive legal move which stresses the need for a transparent and enforceable licensing structure for how AI firms use journalistic content.

Perplexity, which is backed by high-profile investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, continues to defend its operations. The company maintains it is not infringing on intellectual property rights and blames the issue on misinterpretations of how its system works.

This follows several complaints, including a recent incident involving the BBC, where the summarisation feature distorted the content of headlines.

In a statement released on Monday, Apple confirmed that a software update, expected in the coming weeks, will make it more transparent to users when a summary has been created using Apple Intelligence. The company also encouraged users to report any issues with inaccurate summaries.

The BBC had complained after a headline about a murder case involving Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was incorrectly summarised. 

The notification noted that Mangione had shot himself, a claim that was not part of the original report. Other inaccuracies stated by the BBC included summaries falsely announcing a darts champion before the tournament concluded and wrongly attributing a statement about sexual orientation to tennis star Rafael Nadal.

Apple Intelligence, introduced as part of its notification system, aims to help users by condensing information for quick viewing. However, the tool has had issues of occasionally generating misleading summaries. In one instance, a text message reading, “That hike almost killed me,” was summarised as “attempted suicide.”

Users have the option to disable the summarisation feature or adjust its application to specific apps through their device settings. Apple stated that the feature remains optional and part of its goal is to improve user experience with feedback-driven updates.

This development comes as tech companies face challenges in managing AI-generated content. Meta and Google, for example, have also revised their labelling of AI-generated outputs after complaints from users and professionals. 

With Apple enhancing its software, the company aims to provide reliable and user-friendly technology. The forthcoming update is expected to address issues and improve reliance on the notification system.

Sharp resigned after it was discovered that he had breached the law by neglecting to disclose that he had helped former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson obtain a loan guarantee worth $997,500,000,000.

The former Tory contributor twice violated the rules governing public appointments, according to Adam Heppinstall KC’s review, creating the impression that he was not impartial toward the then-prime minister.

By saying he would leave his key position monitoring the independence of the public broadcaster at the end of June, Mr. Sharp freed Rishi Sunak from having to decide his future.

The barrister’s review published on Friday morning said Mr. Sharp risked a perception that he was recommended for the role because he assisted Mr. Johnson “in a private financial matter’’ ahead of his appointment in 2021.

Mr. Heppinstall also said there was the risk it would be perceived that he influenced Mr. Johnson to recommend him by notifying the former prime minister of his application before submitting it.

However, failing to disclose both issues was found to have caused breaches of the governance code for public appointments.

In his resignation statement, Mr. Sharp insisted that his breach of the rules was “inadvertent and not material”.

“Nevertheless, I have decided that it is right to prioritize the interests of the BBC,’’ the former Goldman Sachs banker added.

“I feel that this matter may well be a distraction from the Corporation’s good work where I to remain in post until the end of my term.

“I have therefore this morning resigned as BBC chair to the Secretary of State and the Board.’’

The review was initiated after it came to light that he had referred Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to his friend Sam Blyth, a distant relative of Mr. Johnson who wanted to assist him with his financial difficulties before the Government had approved him for the position.

BBC director-general Tim Davie thanked Mr. Sharp for his service to the BBC and “the drive and intellect he brought to his time as chairman’’.

“Working with him over the last two years has been rewarding and Richard has made a significant contribution to the transformation and success of the BBC,’’ Mr Davie said.

“The focus for all of us at the BBC is continuing the hard work to ensure we deliver for audiences, both now and in the future.’’

I actually thought it was just a non-coding tool until I settled down to consult experts in the field and found I was wrong all along.

In a chat with Chukwuemeka Orjiani M., Founder and CEO of iDot Creations Ent., he said: “WordPress may seem like a non-coding tool for beginners, but at the end of the day, if you do not understand CSS, HTML and PHP very well, you may find it difficult to use WordPress at professional level.”

Explaining further, Adeyinka Adenaike, a Website and Tech-Savvy Expert, said: “WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) publishing tool that can be used to develop different types of websites such as blog, magazine, eCommerce, corporate, forum and social media websites.

It started in 2002 as a blog publishing tool but grew over time and it is open-source which means you can use it to create any type of website for FREE.”

Interesting Statistics About WordPress

1. Roughly every two minutes, another top 10 million sites start using WordPress. (W3Techs, 2021)
2. Its usage has increased at an average of 12% per year since 2011. (W3Techs, 2022)
3. Wordfence blocked 18.5 billion password attack requests on WordPress websites in the first half of 2021. (Wordfence, 2021)
4. Approximately 90% of WordPress vulnerabilities are plugin vulnerabilities. 6% are theme vulnerabilities and 4% are core software vulnerabilities
5. This tool powers 36.28% of the top 1 million websites. (BuiltWith, 2022)
6. It has been the fastest growing content management system for 12 years in a row. (W3Techs, 2022)

I never knew that there were different types of WordPress, but Adenaike enlightened on this. WordPress.com and WordPress.org are the two types that exist.

WordPress.com is more of a hosting platform which powers your website and it is limited but WordPress.org is a self-hosted software which allows you to download, customize and make it yours.

Orjiani made us understand that generally, WordPress can be used by everyone, professionals and non-professionals, to create beautiful websites within minutes, but it still requires vast knowledge of graphic design, imaging and certain other skills to get the website together. 

Why do most publishing companies leverage this tool?

Did you know that WordPress is leveraged by BBC, CNN, Microsoft, several Banks, and others? The tool powers about 43% of online websites and has a huge database of free and premium themes and plugins (extensions) to extend the functionality of any website.

This makes WordPress unique.

Adenaike asserted that this tool is user-friendly – both the backend, frontend and also developer friendly, unlike other CMS platforms. “It is secure and also has some security extension plugins to tighten the security.”

Orjiani agreed that: “It is open-source, free to use, can be navigated and modified seamlessly, and has so many themes to suit your design needs.”

But he said it can have security issues, and also, the lack of programming knowledge can make it very difficult for you in terms of the use of certain plugins and code-breaking.

Asides from publishing and building websites, what else can WordPress be used for?

Adenaike said this globally used innovation can be used as a headless interface for Apps. “When using WordPress in its headless state, you are free to display your content when and where you want it in any technology platform. An example of this in practice would be authoring a blog in WordPress that will then be made available to your iOS and Android app to read.”

On reasons why WordPress is one of the most preferred non-coding tools, Adenaike highlights:

• It has the highest database of free plugins and themes compared to other CMS
• It has well-informed documentation online
• It is open-source and there is room for contribution and a large number of online community
• It is flexible, dynamic and can be used to create any type of website like membership website, eCommerce website, job and recruitment portal, education websites, etc

Conclusively, I couldn’t help but wonder; Would this tool still be a big thing and still be widely used as it is today in the next 10 to 20 years?

Adenaike’s response was simple: “Change is one constant thing. New technologies and coding languages keep coming out always, but with the way WordPress keeps evolving with technology, I believe they will still be widely used in 10 to 20 years.”