Major Japanese daily publishers Nikkei Inc. and The Asahi Shimbun Co. said Tuesday they jointly filed a lawsuit against U.S. artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI Inc. over the alleged unauthorized use of their articles, seeking a total of ¥4.4 billion (P1.7-billion) in compensation.
The two papers are also seeking an injunction against copyright infringement in the lawsuit filed with the Tokyo District Court. Three newspaper companies under Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings filed a similar lawsuit with the court earlier this month.
Nikkei and Asahi claimed that the California-based company, which operates a service that collects information from the internet to provide AI-generated responses, copied and stored article content from the servers of their companies without permission, repeatedly providing responses using the content since at least June 2024.
They also said Perplexity significantly damaged their credibility as newspaper companies by presenting “as fact a large amount of incorrect information that differs from the actual article content” while citing the names of the companies or their articles as sources in its responses.
Perplexity’s actions “amount to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation,” the two companies said in a press release.
“As the unauthorized use continues without improvement, we find the situation to be unacceptable,” The Asahi Shimbun said.
“We will continue to appeal to society about the importance of protecting sound journalism, which supports the foundation of democracy,” said Nikkei.
