Three Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper companies have filed a lawsuit against a US startup that allegedly used numerous Yomiuri Shimbun articles and images without permission for a popular artificial intelligence-powered search engine.
Yomuli Shinbun; Yomuli Shinbun, Osaka; and Yomiuri Shinbun, Seibu, filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court on August 7, demanding that the company cease the use of newspaper articles and seeks damages of approximately 2.17 billion yen (S$18.9 million).
Several AI-related companies in Europe and the US have been taken to court for the misuse of copyrighted material by generative artificial intelligence, but this is the first time a major Japanese media company has filed such a lawsuit.
Founded in 2022, Perplexity offers a search service that analyzes the latest online information to compile answers to questions entered by users. While traditional search engines display a list of websites related to the search terms entered by users, Prplexity proposes the service as an “answer engine” that summarises information collected online. This allows users to get the information they need without looking into individual websites.
In its lawsuit, Yomiuri Shimbun alleges that Perplexity copied articles from the Yomiuri Shimbun Online (YOL) digital service and sent content similar to those articles to users. Yomiuri Shimbun argues that this violates the right to breed and public transmission under copyright law.
Perplexity is said to have obtained 119,467 Yomiuri articles without permission between February and June 2025 with the aim of generating user responses. Yomiuri Shimbun has decided to seek 16,500 yen in damages for each article calculated based on the regular license fee.
The amount of compensation required may increase depending on the findings of further investigation.
Additionally, traditional search engines encourage users to access YOL services, generating advertising revenue for YOMIURI Shimbun. However, Perplexity's services will reduce online visits to YOL.
Yomiuri Shimbun claims this is causing a decline in advertising revenue, which again constitutes a breach of its business interests.
Approximately 2,500 reporters have been involved in Yomiuri Shimbun's news report. As a result, newspapers believe that confusion is “freely riding” on the activities of media organizations that devote “great effort and money” to creating news articles.
Yomiuri Shimbun also seeks compensation for losses in advertising revenue.
In response to Yomiuri Shimbun's email request for comments, Confused sent a message similar to: “We are deeply sorry for the misunderstanding that this caused in Japan. We are currently taking this seriously.
In October 2024, Dow Jones, a division of News Corp, filed a lawsuit along with another company claiming copyright infringement due to confusion. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in New York. The embarrassment rejects the claim in that case, claiming that its search function is based on publicly available facts that are not protected by copyright law.
The Corporate Communications Division of Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings has issued a statement saying: “We hope that allowing the company to freely ride the results of our report will have a negative impact on accurate news coverage supported by our research and undermine the foundations of democracy, and this lawsuit will raise questions about the rapidly expanding rules of generating AI.” Japan News/Asia News Network
