3 Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper Companies Sue Perplexity AI Over Use of About 120,000 Articles

Three Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper companies have filed a lawsuit against a US start-up that allegedly used a large number of Yomiuri Shimbun articles and images for a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engine without permission.

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The Yomiuri Shimbun; The Yomiuri Shimbun, Osaka; and The Yomiuri Shimbun, Seibu, filed the lawsuit demanding that Perplexity AI stop using the newspaper's articles and seeking damages of about 2.17 billion yen ($18.9 million) in the Tokyo District Court on Aug. 7. The three companies are under The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings.

This is the first time a major Japanese media company has filed such a lawsuit, although several AI-related businesses in Europe and the US have been taken to court for the unauthorized use of copyrighted material by generative AI.

Established in 2022, Perplexity provides a search service that parses the latest online information to compile answers to questions typed in by users. A conventional search engine will display a list of websites related to the search terms entered by a user, but Perplexity pitches its service as an "answer engine" that summarizes information gleaned online. This enables users to acquire information they want without looking through individual websites.