May 14 (Reuters) - French newspaper Le Monde entered

into a content partnership with U.S.-based artificial

intelligence company Perplexity on Wednesday, as AI startups

compete for deals with news publications to improve the

responses of their products amid intensifying competition.

The deal grants Perplexity access to Le Monde's content to

enhance its search engine's responses, while the newspaper will

use the Nvidia ( NVDA )-backed startup's technology to develop

new AI products.

This partnership will also support publishers whose content

is featured in Perplexity's generated answers.

"At Le Monde, we have continued to explore new partnerships

with leading AI players to enlarge our audience, expand our

development capacities, and to build new sources of revenues,"

said Louis Dreyfus, Le Monde's CEO.

Perplexity has already secured agreements with over a dozen

media partners, including the Los Angeles Times and the

Independent, as part of a program that shares a portion of ad

revenue with the publishers.

Meanwhile, AI firms have faced lawsuits from media groups

and news publishers, who accuse them of unlawfully using content

and articles without permission to train AI models.