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Tokyo, Aug. 8 (Jiji Press)–The Yomiuri Shimbun has sued U.S. artificial intelligence-powered search engine Perplexity at Tokyo District Court for alleged copyright infringement of the major Japanese newspaper’s articles, seeking a total of some 2,168 million yen in damages.
The newspaper’s three headquarters, located in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka, also demanded a ban on the U.S. startup from using the newspaper’s articles.
This is the first lawsuit filed by a major Japanese news organization against a generative AI company over the use of news articles, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun side.
In its complaint, the Japanese newspaper claims that Perplexity, which answers users’ questions in summarized texts and images after collecting information using its AI-powered search engine, obtained and reproduced information from 119,467 online articles without permission between February and June.
The newspaper group issued a statement saying that tolerating a free ride on articles could negatively affect accurate news reporting. It also said that the lawsuit is intended to seek a court judgment on the discipline and use of AI as this state-of-the-art technology is being rapidly adopted.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
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