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Tag: believes

  • BBC Threatens AI Startup Perplexity with Lawsuit Over Unauthorized News Usage

    BBC Threatens AI Startup Perplexity with Lawsuit Over Unauthorized News Usage

    The BBC has issued a legal warning to US-based artificial intelligence company Perplexity, accusing it of reproducing BBC content without permission and demanding that the company stop using its material, delete existing data, and propose financial compensation.

    BBC vs. Perplexity: A Legal Showdown That’s Been Missing a Few Time‑Zones!

    Lights, Camera, Legal Drama

    The British Broadcasting Corporation has, for the first time, threatened court action against an AI startup. In a letter to Perplexity’s chief tech wizard, Aravind Srinivas, the BBC slammed the chatbot for handing out full BBC news clips to users – a direct hit on UK copyright laws and the broadcaster’s own rules.

    “It’s severely damaging our reputation with audiences and eroding trust,” the BBC wrote. The allegation is that the AI’s supposedly “real‑time” answers are basically recycling original content without giving credit where it’s due.

    Perplexity’s Response: A Classic ‘We’re Not the Culprit’ Defense

    Quickly on the back of the notice, Perplexity fired back with a terse statement that felt oddly reminiscent of a smug email reply: “The BBC’s claims are just one more part of the overwhelming evidence that the BBC will do anything to preserve Google’s illegal monopoly.” No clarity was offered on why Google is relevant here, leaving readers guessing.

    The Core of the Dispute: Web Scraping Gone Rogue

    At the heart of this spat is the practice of web scraping—bots that coil up footage from sites and feed it into AI models. While many sites use robots.txt files to tell bots “nope” to certain content, compliance is voluntary. The BBC claims it specifically blocked two of Perplexity’s crawlers, yet the AI company allegedly keeps crawling their pages.

    Perplexity’s CEO had previously claimed the bots honour robots.txt and do not use data to train large language models. Instead, the platform positions itself as a “real‑time answer engine” that pulls living info from the web.

    Industry Allies Get Loud

    The Professional Publishers Association (PPA), which represents more than 300 UK media brands, joined the chorus of concern:

    • No authorization or compensation for reusing publishers’ content.
    • Threats to the UK’s £4.4 billion publishing industry.
    • Assault on jobs supporting the sector – about 55,000 people.
    • A call for the government to beef up copyright protection for AI usage.

    Why This Matters: A Broader Fight Between Newsrooms and AI

    Consider the surge of AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity’s own chatbot. While they’re handy for quick answers, critics press them for:

    • Misleading or incomplete summaries.
    • No clear attribution of original sources.
    • Diverting traffic away from the news organizations that created the content.

    In January, Apple even pulled an AI feature that generated bogus BBC headlines on iPhones after the broadcaster complained.

    Industry Voices: The Stakes for Journalism

    Quentin Willson, a former Top Gear host and FairCharge campaign founder, warned: “If AI is allowed to scrape and regurgitate verified journalism without consent or compensation, the business model for serious news collapses.”

    While some outlets have negotiated licensing deals—AP, Axel Springer, News Corp, and the like—others are hitting the legal road. The New York Times is already suing OpenAI and Microsoft, and further lawsuits loom as AI advances.

    What’s Next? Will the BBC Follow Through?

    For now, the BBC demands that Perplexity stops any unauthorized use, deletes all scraped data, and pays damages. If the broadcaster pushes ahead with formal litigation, it could set a huge precedent in the global tussle over AI and journalism.

  • Government health minister says eating at desks is ‘disgusting’, but should it be banned?

    Government health minister says eating at desks is ‘disgusting’, but should it be banned?

    Recent research has found that nearly two thirds of workers eat their lunch at their desk every day, with many admitting they would feel ‘guilty’ if they left the office for their allocated hour.

    Many workers are no longer paid for their lunch breaks, and therefore have every legal right to leave the premises for a full 60 minutes each and every day.

    So why are we rushing out to pick up a quick meal deal and heading straight back to dine ‘al desco’?

    Put simply, times are tough for most companies at the moment and employees are feeling this strain more than anybody. So while stomachs might be calling for lunch, there’s a good chance that the boss is calling even louder for the completion of the next piece of work.

    Sure, we would all enjoy being able to leave the office – and to leave our emails there while we’re at it – to enjoy a leisurely lunch for a full 60 minutes, but the fact is it just isn’t viable for the majority of employees anymore.

    So is eating at your desk as disgusting as Anna Soubry has suggested, and if so, can it harm your health?

    Dr Ron Cutler, a microbiologist at Queen Mary University of London, believes a quick lunch at the desk could be potentially threatening to your health:

    He said: “The crumbs that accumulate on your desk and in your keyboard provide a perfect environment for bacteria and fungi to thrive.

    “The temperature in offices is typically around 20C, the point at which staphylococcus can breed, causing diarrhoea and vomiting — which is why leaving your sandwich on your desk all morning is also a risk.

    “And the more people who share office equipment or desks, the greater the risk of catching a bug.

    “The more people use certain equipment, the more germs will be on it.”

    It appears then, that your desk probably isn’t the most hygienic place to consume your lunch.

    So how can companies maintain staff productivity levels, while lowering their exposure to such potentially unsanitary conditions?

    The simple answer would be to introduce a ban on staff eating at their desks and force them to leave the office. However, this might result in them feeling extra pressure to meet deadlines and leave them feeling frustrated.

    Although, having said that, I used to work at a busy law firm in Paris, were the lunchtime culture resulted in two-hour breaks filled with eating and exercise – not at the same time of course – and productivity levels didn’t seem to suffer at all.

    Eating away from the desk may even result in workers taking less sick leave, as germs are prevented from traveling around the office so freely, and therefore output levels might actually increase.

    The other option, and probably the more viable one to many businesses, is to introduce a regular cleaning process. This would ensure that desks and workstations are fully cleaned and sterilised, reducing the number of germs in circulation.

    To ensure that employers are acting lawfully, they must also be aware of their employees’ rights when it comes to lunch-time dining:

    • For employers, ensure that you include break periods within contracts of employment so that your staff know what to expect each lunch time.
    • If this is not the case, the Working Time Regulations state that an adult employee is entitled to a 20 minute rest break, during a daily working time of more than 6 hours per day, and under normal circumstances, they are absolutely entitled to take that rest break wherever they want, including leaving the premises.
    • However, breaks cannot be taken at the end of the working day – it must be somewhere in the middle.
    • Employers have the right to manage the time when breaks are taken, as long as it meets these conditions.
    • Employees have no statutory right to take smoking breaks.

    To summarise, however your company chooses to combat the issue of eating ‘al desco’, the most important factor for many employers is the productivity and motivation of their staff. Whatever you decide to do, be sure to consult your team and involve them in any decision you make. If you can achieve staff buy-in, creating the lunchtime culture you want will be much easier.