Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun sue Perplexity AI over alleged copyright violations

The newspapers are seeking an injunction and 2.2 billion ( 15 million) each in damages from Perplexity, they said in a joint statement Tuesday. The suit was filed at the Tokyo District Court. The legal action by the Nikkei, which owns Japan's biggest financial newspaper, and the left-leaning Asahi underscores a widening rift between publishers and AI companies over who controls -- and profits from -- the distribution of news. The media industry argues that AI tools using their work without licenses siphons away readership and ad revenue, threatening already fragile business models. "These actions amount to continuous and large-scale freeloading on journalists' time and effort," Nikkei and Asahi said in the statement.