Perplexity faces new lawsuits from Nikkei and Asahi over AI content use

AI search engine Perplexity, valued at $18 billion, is encountering renewed legal challenges from news publishers, despite efforts to foster collaborative relationships. The latest lawsuit, brought by two of Japan’s largest media groups—Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun—accuses Perplexity of copying and storing article content without consent, while disregarding technical measures such as the “robots.txt” protocol designed to prevent unauthorized scraping [1]. The media groups are seeking ¥2.2 billion ($15 million) in damages each, citing violations of both copyright and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act [1].

The case is a blow to Perplexity’s strategy of engaging with media organizations as partners. The AI search engine, which generates concise, citation-inclusive answers by crawling and synthesizing online content, relies heavily on news articles for its functionality. To ease tensions, the company has signed revenue-sharing agreements with outlets like Fortune, Time, and the Los Angeles Times, and recently launched a program to allow publishers to share revenue generated through its Comet browser and AI assistant [1]. Under this initiative, publishers receive 80% of revenue from a new subscription tier, Comet Plus, when their content drives traffic or appears in search queries [1].

Perplexity has consistently emphasized the importance of journalism to its business model. Jessica Chan, the company’s head of publishing partnerships, has stated that a “thriving journalism and digital publishing ecosystem” is essential for the success of Perplexity [1]. Yet, these efforts have not deterred a growing number of legal actions. The BBC, Forbes, Wired, News Corp’s Dow Jones, and The New York Post have all raised legal or commercial objections to Perplexity’s use of their content [1]. Most recently, a U.S. federal court declined to dismiss News Corp’s lawsuit, reinforcing the legal uncertainty surrounding AI’s use of copyrighted material [1].

The Nikkei and Asahi suit also alleges that Perplexity has damaged the credibility of the papers by producing inaccurate summaries and misattributing information, misleading readers about the source of the content [1]. The company has denied violating robots.txt directives, but a 2024 report in Wired suggested that Perplexity may have circumvented website protections using undisclosed IP addresses [1]. Similar disputes have arisen with Cloudflare, which discovered that Perplexity was bypassing no-crawling requests by disguising its traffic [1].

The legal battles highlight a broader debate over the rights and responsibilities of AI platforms. While Perplexity positions itself as a tool for knowledge aggregation, publishers argue that their content is being exploited without proper licensing or compensation. The outcome of these cases could shape the future of AI development, determining whether platforms must secure explicit rights for content use or operate under a framework where data aggregation is considered transformative [1]. Given Perplexity’s high valuation and leadership in AI search, the resolution of these disputes will likely set key precedents for the industry [1].

Source: [1]title1.............................(url1: https://fortune.com/2025/08/26/perplexity-lawsuits-publishers-ai-search-nikkei-news-corp/)