Nikkei, Asahi Sue U.S. AI Startup over Unauthorized Use of Articles, Seek Injunction to Halt Usage

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, August 28, 2025

Nikkei Inc. and The Asahi Shimbun Co. on Tuesday jointly filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, Inc., seeking an injunction to halt the unauthorized use of their articles and demanding ¥2.2 billion each in damages.

The legal action, filed at the Tokyo District Court, follows a similar lawsuit over copyright infringement recently brought by The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper companies at the same court, marking the second such case against the U.S.-based startup company by major Japanese news organizations.

Perplexity’s service combines a search engine with generative AI, providing answers to user queries by summarizing information on the internet.

According to statements from Nikkei, Asahi and others, they claim in the lawsuit that Perplexity infringed on their copyrights by scraping articles and their summaries from their websites without permission. The newspapers also allege that Perplexity’s actions constitute a violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Law, as the AI service has damaged their credibility as newspaper companies, which provide accurate information, by providing inaccurate information while still citing the news organizations as the source.

The suit further asserts that Perplexity violated the companies’ terms of use by scraping articles for AI training and other purposes, including articles intended for paid subscribers and distribution partners,. The plaintiffs argue that Perplexity is “free-riding” on their investment and effort in creating the articles, thereby undermining their business models and making their operations difficult.

Nikkei and Asahi are seeking compensation for a portion of the damages incurred the aforementioned actions since June last year.

“Copyright infringement by generative AI providers is a shared issue across the newspaper industry,” Nikkei’s public relations office said in a statement. “Through this lawsuit, we aim to show conclusively that our articles are being used without permission and to put a stop to unchecked copyright infringement.”

“As the unauthorized use continues without improvement, we find the situation to be unacceptable,” Asahi’s public relations office said in a statement. “We will continue to demand accountability from any provider that persists in illegal use without obtaining proper authorization.”