Italian Media Companies Sue Perplexity AI for Copyright Infringement
Rti and Medusa Film, subsidiaries of Mediaset, filed Italy's first lawsuit against US-based Perplexity AI, alleging the company used their audiovisual and cinematographic content without authorization to train AI systems. The lawsuit seeks an immediate halt to unauthorized use, recognition of liability, and damages with daily penalties for future violations.
What happened
Rti and Medusa Film, companies within the Mediaset group, filed a complaint with the Civil Court of Rome against US-based Perplexity AI, accusing the company of using audiovisual and cinematographic content without permission and at large scale to train its artificial intelligence systems.
The complaint aims to establish the unlawfulness of an entire model of content collection and use in the field of generative AI, going beyond the issue of data scraping alone. Mediaset had previously begun signaling this issue, with messages appearing on some of its broadcasts prohibiting content use for AI training purposes.
Reported impact
Rti and Medusa Film are requesting immediate cessation of any further unauthorized use, recognition of civil liability and damages compensation, with the addition of daily penalties in case of new violations.
Index analysis
The Italian legal action is part of an international context already in motion against Perplexity AI. Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have sued the company in a federal court in Manhattan, accusing it of reproducing copyrighted articles and definitions in its answer engine responses and using crawlers that disregard robots.txt file limitations.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.