Perplexity AI, a generative AI search engine, is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit from News Corp's Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

The publishers accuse the AI startup, which is backed by Nvidia, of using copyrighted news content to generate answers for search users and steer traffic to their websites.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The publishers are seeking for Perplexity to stop using their content without permission, destroy all databases that contain their copyrighted materials, and pay up to $150,000 for each copyright infringement case.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of lawsuits involving AI startups. The lawsuits usually focus on the use of copyrighted content by AI companies to train large language models.

Last week, The New York Times Co. sent a "cease and desist" letter to Perplexity, asking the company to stop using its content. The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI last December, alleging the two companies illegally used its content to train artificial intelligence models.

Perplexity, which is also backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is currently entering another funding round, trying to double its valuation to $8 billion or more.

The startup does not have its own AI model but uses a combination of existing LLMs. It recently started to shift its business model from a subscription model to an advertising model, which is similar to how search giant Google operates.

This summer, Perplexity announced that it would reach agreements with several major publishers to share advertising revenue.

OpenAI also reached several agreements with content creators such as the Financial Times to train its artificial intelligence models.