Japanese Media Groups Sue AI Search Engine Perplexity Over Alleged Copyright Infringement (ft.com)
(Tuesday August 26, 2025 @03:00AM (msmash)
from the tussle-continues dept.)
- Reference: 0178869632
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/0553200/japanese-media-groups-sue-ai-search-engine-perplexity-over-alleged-copyright-infringement
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/79a88d1a-d914-4188-8792-0a20973b39a1
Two of Japan's largest media groups are suing AI search engine Perplexity [1]over alleged copyright infringement , joining a growing list of news publishers taking legal action against AI companies using their content. FT:
> Japanese media group Nikkei, which owns the Financial Times, and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in statements on Tuesday that they had jointly filed a lawsuit in Tokyo. The groups join a number of Western media companies taking legal action against Perplexity, which provides answers to questions with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
>
> The Japanese news providers claim Perplexity has, without permission, "copied and stored article content from the servers of Nikkei and Asahi" and ignored a "technical measure" designed to prevent this from happening. They claim that Perplexity's answers have given incorrect information attributed to the newspapers' articles, which "severely damages the credibility of newspaper companies."
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/79a88d1a-d914-4188-8792-0a20973b39a1
> Japanese media group Nikkei, which owns the Financial Times, and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in statements on Tuesday that they had jointly filed a lawsuit in Tokyo. The groups join a number of Western media companies taking legal action against Perplexity, which provides answers to questions with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
>
> The Japanese news providers claim Perplexity has, without permission, "copied and stored article content from the servers of Nikkei and Asahi" and ignored a "technical measure" designed to prevent this from happening. They claim that Perplexity's answers have given incorrect information attributed to the newspapers' articles, which "severely damages the credibility of newspaper companies."
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/79a88d1a-d914-4188-8792-0a20973b39a1
ohh now they're a 'search' company (Score:2)
Is this some kind of media effort to claim there's really no difference between an LLM and a search engine?
Please actually ask someone who understands algorithms and data structures why this might not work out. The fact google have poisoned their search with advertising does not mean that's normal.
Re: (Score:2)
A better question would be did Perplexity bypass anything meant to deny access to web crawlers. (robots.txt, IP bans, etc.)
That would hold more legal water than simply having different browser agent from lets say Chrome.
I'd look to see what their claims were, but sadly they are demanding a subscription to see the post, so I guess Perplexity didn't pay the toll. (I guess TFS is also a fair warning to anyone trying to get TFA without paying them.)
Re: (Score:3)
After a little searching, I can confirm that the case has been submitted to the Tokyo courts... so US law isn't the primary concern here... but further our web based rationalisations are pretty secondary in their claims... which do appear to be about using private information and relaying it.
The complaint cites lost revenue and readership for articles farmed by crawlers, and Yomiuri Shimbun co (who are incidentally the largest newspaper corp in Japan, apparently) appear to be claiming that they have differe
Re: (Score:2)
This is big! This is really BIG! With such high stakes (and the fact that Japanese courts have a high conviction rate), I don't think Perplexity should rely on just any lawyer for this case. They need an exceptional lawyer who can get them off the hook. Not just any exceptional lawyer, mind you. A truly genius level one who can speak multiple languages and remembers every law book ever written. A superhuman lawyer, effectively....
Obviously Perplexity should send a talented AI lawyer over Zoom, to defend t