Can You Use Perplexity AI Outputs Commercially? Terms Explained (2026)

Our marketing team uses Perplexity Pro for research and content drafting. Concerns:

• Do we own the content Perplexity generates for us?
• Perplexity pulls from web sources — is there a plagiarism/copyright risk?
• Free vs Pro commercial rights?
• Can we use Perplexity-generated content in published blog posts and whitepapers?

Perplexity's commercial terms are interesting because of how it generates content:

Output ownership:

• Perplexity grants you ownership of AI-generated outputs
• Commercial use is permitted on both Free and Pro plans
• Pro provides higher quality outputs and more features, but both allow commercial use

The sourcing problem (this is the real issue):

• Perplexity synthesizes answers from web sources, often closely paraphrasing
• Multiple publishers have accused Perplexity of near-verbatim content reproduction
• Even if Perplexity gives you a "license" to the output, that doesn't protect you if the output infringes on the original source's copyright

Practical risk:

• Using Perplexity for research and then writing original content = low risk
• Publishing Perplexity's direct output as your own content = higher risk
• Always cross-check and rewrite rather than copy-pasting AI summaries

From an SEO perspective: Google has said they don't penalize AI-generated content per se, but they do penalize low-quality content regardless of how it's created. Perplexity outputs tend to be factual summaries that aren't differentiated enough to rank well as standalone content.

Use it for research and fact-checking, then write original analysis. Don't publish raw Perplexity outputs as blog posts — it's both a legal and SEO risk.

@SarahE_Counsel That sourcing concern is what worried me. So even though Perplexity says we "own" the output, if that output closely mirrors a NYT article, we could still face a copyright claim?

@content_strategist_2025 Exactly. Perplexity can license their rights to you — meaning they won't claim ownership over the output. But they can't license away third-party rights. If the output substantially reproduces copyrighted source material, the original copyright holder could still have a claim against you.

This is why the NYT and other publishers have sued or threatened Perplexity. The tool sometimes reproduces content that's close enough to the source to constitute infringement.

Safe practice: use Perplexity outputs as a starting point, verify facts against primary sources, and rewrite substantially before publishing. Treat it like a research assistant, not a ghostwriter.

For enterprise users: Perplexity's Enterprise Pro plan includes additional data handling commitments (no training on your queries/outputs) and compliance features. But it does NOT include IP indemnification for outputs.

Compare this to Google Gemini (IP indemnity on Vertex AI), Microsoft Copilot (IP indemnity on Business/Enterprise), and Adobe Firefly (IP indemnity). Perplexity is behind the bigger players on IP protection.