Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization.
Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).
That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me, at least for the duration of the election. What other services of value except LLMs to write articles does Perplexity have to offer to the New York Times?
That's my read too, but they could also e.g. lend them some engineers, have them build an election dashboard for them etc.
The fact that that would still be crossing the picket line, how realistic any of that is, or how genuine the offer, are all great questions/observations, but "replace with AI" seems like a quite dishonest editorialization in any case.
The only way having AI write articles would help is if it freed up working staff to help out with tech stuff-—which they said they won’t do.
> Though TechCrunch asked Perplexity for comment, Srinivas responded to TechCrunch’s post on X saying that “the offer was not to ‘replace’ journalists or engineers with AI but to provide technical infra support on a high-traffic day.” The striking workers in question, however, are the ones who provide that service to the NYT. It’s not really clear what services other than AI tools Perplexity could offer, or why they would not amount to replacing the workers in question. (However, in response to the clarification, we have opted to change the headline to reflect the claim that this offer was not necessarily specific to AI services.)
> Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes sorry to see this. Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. DM me anytime here.”
it's absolutely scab behavior
They're using AI as smokescreen for anti-labor practices, as all AI tech executives are.
Who is claiming that in this thread, the linked Techcrunch article, or the tweet quoted in that article?
And even if the Perplexity CEO in particular, or AI tech executives generally were to make that claim elsewhere: Misquoting somebody to strengthen a point like that immediately and significantly reduces my trust in a source.
Also, I'd say that the fact that Techcrunch just changed the headline speaks for itself.
But this notion is definitely rolling around in the heads of these people, even if they won't say so because it's bad optics. What a CEO/executive says and what they believe and what they do are three very different things. You often cannot trust their weasel words.
But as for "the PerplexityAI CEO didn't say "with AI" in those words!!!"... how else exactly would an AI company help out with striking workers without their product of AI? That is an obvious subtext unsaid.
I'm just pointing out that "offering to help" does equal "offering to help with AI". Sure, it's somewhat heavily implied by context, but journalistic integrity means making it clear what's an implication and what somebody actually said.
TechCrunch even seems to agree: They changed the headline retroactively.