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The BBC is threatening to take legal action against an artificial intelligence (AI) firm whose chatbot the corporation says is reproducing BBC content "verbatim" without its permission. The BBC has written to Perplexity, which is based in the US, demanding it immediately stops using BBC content, deletes any it holds, and proposes financial compensation for the material it has already used. It is the first time that the BBC - one of the world's largest news organisations - has taken such action against an AI company. In a statement, Perplexity said: "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." It did not explain what it believed the relevance of Google was to the BBC's position, or offer any further comment. The BBC also cited its research published earlier this year that found four popular AI chatbots - including Perplexity AI - were inaccurately summarising news stories, including some BBC content. Pointing to findings of significant issues with representation of BBC content in some Perplexity AI responses analysed, it said such output fell short of BBC Editorial Guidelines around the provision of impartial and accurate news. "It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences - including UK licence fee payers who fund the BBC - and undermining their trust in the BBC," it added. Chatbots and image generators that can generate content response to simple text or voice prompts in seconds have swelled in popularity since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. In January Apple suspended an AI feature that generated false headlines for BBC News app notifications when summarising groups of them for iPhones users, following BBC complaints.