Source: DDay.it

DDay.it reports on a historic legal development in Italy, where RTI and Medusa (companies belonging to the Mediaset group) have filed the first lawsuit in the country against an Artificial Intelligence company for copyright infringement. The defendant, Perplexity AI, is accused of systematically using the audio-visual and textual content owned by the plaintiffs to train its artificial intelligence models without authorization or remuneration. The lawsuit, filed at the Court of Rome on December 3, 2025, marks a turning point in the Italian legal landscape regarding the relationship between content creators and generative AI platforms.

The article details that RTI and Medusa are seeking an injunction to stop the unauthorized use of their intellectual property, as well as damages for the alleged infringement. The plaintiffs argue that Perplexity's "Answer Engine" retrieves and re-elaborates their proprietary content to provide answers to users, thereby competing directly with the original content providers while freeriding on their investments. The summary highlights that this case mirrors similar high-profile litigation in the USA (such as the New York Times vs. OpenAI), and its outcome is expected to set a critical precedent for how European copyright directives are applied to AI training activities in Italy.