More than 100 copyright lawsuits have been filed against AI companies as of early 2026. The television network CNN is taking aim at the artificial intelligence search engine Perplexity in a lawsuit over copyright infringement. As reported by the network's Brian Stetler , the suit, filed Thursday in a New York District Court, accuses the AI company of copying and distributing CNN's content, including over 17,000 of CNN's stories, videos, images and other published works.  Though this is CNN's first legal case against an AI company, the network joins other publishers who have sued the San Francisco-based startup, including the New York Times and News Corp. According to the suit, CNN attempted to strike a licensing deal with Perplexity, but those talks didn't result in an agreement. CNN previously made a content licensing deal with Meta last year, where the tech giant compensates the media company for using its reporting and content to respond to queries on Meta AI.…