Confused AI is a startup that has been slammed by online publishers before, and is trying to rebuild trust with media players through revenue sharing protocols. However, this effort has not stopped complaints about the company’s superficial content. Its latest challenge comes from Japanese media groups Nikkei and Asahi Shumbun, a joint lawsuit accusing copyright infringement today (August 26).
Confusion was co-founded in 2022 by CEO Aravind Srinivas and soon became a leader in AI-driven search, currently worth $18 billion. Unlike traditional search engines that return links, confusing is aggregating information found online with references.
Confused did not respond to observers’ request for comment on the lawsuit.
Nikkei and Asahi Shumbun, who own the Japanese newspaper of the same name and the Financial Times, claimed that confusion has been storing and re-laying its articles since June 2024, which publishers described as a “free ride” of journalists’ works. The lawsuit filed in the Tokyo District Court, requiring AI companies to delete stored articles, stop copying publisher content, and pay each media company 2.2 billion yen ($15 million) in damages.
The lawsuit also claims that the troublesomeness implemented by news publishers ignores robot.txt’s safeguards to prevent unauthorized crawlings and sometimes present articles with incorrect information, a move that “seriously damages the credibility of the newspaper.”
This is not the first conflict between confusion and the press release. Earlier this month, Yomiuri Shimbun, another major Japanese newspaper, filed a lawsuit against the company. The American media also raised challenges.
Last year, Condé Nast, Forbes and the New York Times threatened legal lawsuits suspected of copyright infringement. Currently, Dow Jones and The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) fight the 2024 lawsuit and claim the startup abuses content to train AI models. The court recently dismissed a bid to dismiss the case in confusion.
After that, confusion attempted to ease tensions by launching revenue sharing programs, thus allowing the media to make a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their materials. The program attracted partners such as Time Magazine, Fortune and German news website Der Spiegel. Confusion also recently released plans to provide publishers with about 80% of Comet Plus sales, a news service expected to launch later this year.
Currently, the media industry remains divided on how to deal with the rise of AI (such as the Associated Press, Vox Media and Atlantic), with a license agreement signed with OpenAI. Others are on guard. The New York Times is suing Openai and Microsoft for unauthorized use of its content, and Canadian startup Cohere has faced similar lawsuits this year from more than a dozen news publishers. Thompson Reuters also accused AI platform Ross Intelligence of suffering copyright infringement, a case that dates back to 2020.
