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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." 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. The rise in this activity, known as web scraping, recently prompted British media publishers to join calls by creatives for the UK government to uphold protections around copyrighted content. It said bots were being used to "illegally scrape publishers' content to train their models without permission or payment."