Nikkei and the Asahi Shimbun filed a lawsuit against AI search engine Perplexity AI for alleged copyright infringement, joining other news organizations in Japan and the U.S. that are challenging the use of their content in AI tools, Bloomberg News reported.
The newspapers want an injunction and ¥2.2B (about $15M) each in damages from Perplexity, they said in a joint statement in Japanese, the report added.
The lawsuit against the Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)-backed startup was filed at the Tokyo District Court.
Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
The legal action underscores a rift between publishers and AI companies over who controls, and profits from, the distribution of news. The media industry argues that AI tools using their work without licenses take away readership and ad revenue, threatening an already fragile business model.
“These actions amount to continuous and large-scale freeloading on journalists’ time and effort,” said Nikkei and Asahi in the statement. “If left unchecked, this could undermine all media outlets trying to accurately report the facts and ultimately shake the very foundations of democracy.”
The newspapaers said Perplexity reproduced and saved content from the Nikkei and the Asahi since at least June 2024. The AI company’s AI search results ignored coding that suggested content off-limits and also inserted errors that were attributed to the news organizations, damaging the newspapers’ reputations, they noted.
Courts in Japan, the U.S., and the EU are now becoming battlegrounds that could set precedent for how copyright law applies to generative AI. Perplexity has also been targeted by Forbes, News Corp.’s Dow Jones and the Yomiuri Shimbun, the report added.