Two of Japan’s leading daily newspapers, Asahi Shimbun Co. and Nikkei Inc., have filed a lawsuit against United States based AI company, Perplexity AI Inc., alleging copyright infringement and misinformation.

The case was lodged at Tokyo District Court on August 26.

The publishers claim Perplexity’s AI-powered search engine uses their copyrighted articles without permission, and they are seeking an injunction to stop the AI company from reproducing their content.

They are also demanding that the material be deleted and are pursuing 2.2 billion yen ($14.9 million) in damages per company.

The lawsuit comes amid a global surge of legal actions by news organizations against AI firms over the unauthorized use of journalistic content.

Earlier this month, The Yomiuri Shimbun became the first major Japanese newspaper to take similar legal action.

Perplexity maintains that its service combines traditional search engines with generative AI, producing answers by summarizing information from multiple sources.

However, Asahi and Nikkei allege the AI copies articles from their servers, stores them on its own systems, and presents portions as answers on user devices.

The publishers also note that despite “robots.txt” files on their websites prohibiting such use, Perplexity has repeatedly accessed and used the content since at least June 2024, infringing on rights of reproduction and public transmission.

Some AI-generated responses, they say, cite the newspapers but present inaccurate information, potentially damaging journalistic credibility and violating Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Law.

In a statement, the two companies said, “Perplexity’s actions amount to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation.”