Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI, Japanese Media Companies Target Perplexity

Artificial intelligence is increasingly at the center of legal proceedings shaping the technological and media future. After Elon Musk, through his company xAI, sued Apple and OpenAI for allegedly violating antitrust rules, the largest Japanese media companies Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun have joined the legal battle by filing a lawsuit against the AI search engine Perplexity for copyright infringement. These cases reveal the growing tension between tech giants, startups, and publishers, with a common denominator being the struggle for control over content, market, and revenue in the era of artificial intelligence, reports the Financial Times.

xAI Files Lawsuit Against Apple and OpenAI

Elon Musk’s company xAI has filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, claiming they violated antitrust rules by disrupting competition in the field of artificial intelligence. This opens a new front in the billionaire’s conflict with the two companies.

Last year, Apple struck a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri, as well as into writing and camera features, marking a significant step for the tech giant in introducing artificial intelligence to its devices.

– As a result of the Apple-OpenAI agreement, ChatGPT is not just the default choice; it is the only generative AI chatbot with first-party integration into Apple smartphones – states the lawsuit filed by Musk’s companies xAI and X in a federal court in the U.S. on Monday. According to the lawsuit, OpenAI received ‘exclusive access to billions of potential queries’.

This major lawsuit deepens one of the biggest conflicts in Silicon Valley, between Musk and his former ally Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. It also pulls Apple into the extended legal battle of rival billionaires.

The lawsuit claims that the ‘illegal agreement’ deprives competing chatbots of equal reach and access to users. Furthermore, it accuses Apple of failing to innovate in the field of AI, specifically mentioning the problematic introduction of its Apple Intelligence system. It also states that Apple manipulated app rankings in the App Store and delayed app updates to harm Grok, the chatbot developed by xAI.

Apple previously stated that it plans to integrate its software with other AI chatbots, but since the introduction of the ChatGPT integration in December, it has not announced new partnerships. The company has been in negotiations with Google regarding the integration of Gemini.

– The lawsuit also accuses OpenAI of monopolizing the AI chatbot market – said a spokesperson for OpenAI.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When Musk announced earlier this month that he would sue the company, Apple stated that its App Store is ‘designed to be fair and unbiased’.

Apple is accused of trying to protect its monopoly over smartphones by stifling the development of AI ‘super-apps’ that threaten the traditional app bundle from which the company generates revenue.

xAI’s lawsuit recalls allegations from the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple last year, which claimed that the iPhone maker prevented the development of such apps because they threatened its lucrative service business.

When the Apple-OpenAI agreement was announced in June 2024, Musk claimed it was an ‘unacceptable security breach’ that would allow OpenAI access to user data on the iPhone. He also announced a ban on using those devices in his companies. Musk’s hostility towards Apple further escalated. When he bought Twitter in 2022, he accused Apple of threatening to remove the app from the App Store. He also sharply criticized Apple’s 30 percent commission on digital purchases in the store.

The conflict soon quieted after Musk met with Tim Cook and resolved the misunderstanding. However, in November 2023, the conflict reignited when Apple, along with several other advertisers, pulled ads from X. Since then, it has resumed advertising on the platform.

The lawsuit also represents Musk’s latest strike against OpenAI, a company he helped found in 2015 but left in 2018 after a conflict with Altman. In 2023, Musk launched his own AI company xAI and merged it with the social network X earlier this year. He is also suing OpenAI in California, claiming that its profit-oriented focus is a breach of contract. This year, he attempted to purchase key assets from OpenAI but was rejected. According to recent court documents, he tried to involve Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in that endeavor.

Earlier this month, Musk called Altman a liar after Altman suggested that he was manipulating X to promote his own posts. Musk responded: ‘Your post has far more views than many of mine, even though I have 50 times more followers than you!’ The lawsuit filed on Monday also claims that Apple and OpenAI ‘used X’s platform to spread misinformation about their anti-competitive plan’.

Japanese Media Companies Sue Perplexity for Alleged Copyright Infringement

The two largest Japanese media companies have filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, an AI search engine, for alleged copyright infringement, joining a growing number of publishers launching legal actions against AI companies that use their content.

Nikkei, the media group that owns the Financial Times, and the newspaper Asahi Shimbun announced on Tuesday that they have jointly filed a lawsuit in Tokyo. This joins a series of Western media companies that have initiated proceedings against Perplexity. This platform uses large language models (LLMs) from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to provide answers to questions along with sources and citations.

Japanese publishers claim that Perplexity has ‘copied and stored content from articles on the servers of Nikkei and Asahi’ without permission and ignored a ‘technical protective measure’ intended to prevent such actions. They also assert that Perplexity’s answers provided inaccurate information attributed to articles from those newspapers, which ‘seriously undermines the credibility of the news organizations’. Nikkei and Asahi are seeking damages of 2.2 billion yen ($15 million) each, as well as the deletion of stored articles by Perplexity.

– Perplexity’s actions represent extensive and ongoing ‘free exploitation’ of the content of articles that journalists from both houses have researched and written with great effort, while Perplexity pays no compensation – stated Nikkei.

The two houses added: ‘If this is not stopped, it could undermine the very foundations of journalism, which is dedicated to accurately conveying facts’.

Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment. These lawsuits follow a move by another major Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri, and show that publishers in Japan are beginning to push back against AI companies, lawyers point out.

– These are test cases – said Kensaku Fukui, a copyright expert from the Kotto Dori law firm in Tokyo.

He added that Japanese copyright law somewhat allows for use for AI training, but there are still certain limitations.

Dow Jones (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and the New York Post claim that Perplexity is taking readers and revenue from publishers by using their content to provide answers through its chatbot, instead of paying or directing users to their websites.

This summer, the BBC also asked Perplexity to stop using its content for training AI models, in a letter similar to those previously sent by the New York Times and Condé Nast.

However, Perplexity has introduced revenue-sharing agreements with publishers like Time, Fortune, and Der Spiegel. They receive compensation when their articles are used as references in answers, demonstrating how AI startups are increasingly seeking commercial partnerships and licenses with publishers. Perplexity has over 30 million users, mostly in the U.S., and its main source of revenue comes from subscriptions.