The newspaper accuses Perplexity of “taking advantage of the fruit of the activities of press organizations, which invest a lot of efforts and money for free. A spokesperson for the newspaper added that this “could have a negative impact on quality journalism (…) and shake the foundations of democracy”.
The complaint, filed Thursday in Tokyo, is the last in a series of proceedings brought by press companies worldwide against AI companies using their content. This is the first deposited by a large Japanese press organization, said Yomiuri.
In its complaint filed in Tokyo, the newspaper claims 2.2 billion yen (12 million francs) of damages, the equivalent to 120,000 Yomiuri articles used “without authorization” between February and June.
It also requires damages for lost advertising revenues, saying that perplexity users only click on research summaries and not on the newspaper’s website, which reduces traffic. Perplexity was not immediately available to comment.
The Yomiuri, with a daily broadcast of around six million copies – against more than 10 million in 2010 – and some 2,500 reporters, is one of the five main daily newspapers in Japan.
After a complaint filed by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in October, Perplexity had criticized “the conflictual attitude” of many media as being “myopic, useless and counterproductive”.
