22OCT

Hakuhodo sells AI image copyright check

2 min read

16:20UTC

Hakuhodo is now selling clients the tool it used in-house to screen AI-generated ad images for copyright risk, while saying it does not rule on infringement.

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IndustryAssessed

Key takeaway

Hakuhodo now sells clients the copyright screen it built for its own AI-generated ads.

Hakuhodo, the Japanese advertising group, began selling its in-house Image Similarity Checker to client companies on 19 October⁠¹. The tool, previously used inside the Hakuhodo DY group, screens AI-generated ad creative for copyright risk by searching the web for similar images and scoring how close they are. Hakuhodo says it "does not determine whether copyright infringement has occurred", so the final rights decision stays with the client. The same day it launched AI Governance Design, consulting that sells its internal AI governance process to clients. The European Commission's AI content-marking code, which about 190 organisations signed in July, deals with labelling AI output rather than the copyright question Hakuhodo's tool screens for.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Hakuhodo is a big Japanese advertising agency. Many adverts are now made with artificial intelligence (AI) tools that create pictures from text instructions. Those pictures can sometimes look very like an existing photo or drawing, which could break copyright rules. Hakuhodo has built a tool that searches the internet for similar images and gives a score for how alike they are. It used the tool on its own work and now sells it to other companies. The tool does not say whether the law has been broken. The company using it still has to decide.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Generative image tools can produce creative that resembles existing work without the user knowing the source. An agency that makes AI adverts for clients therefore needs a check before publication, and Hakuhodo built one for the Hakuhodo DY Group before selling it outside.

The product's audit features, single sign-on, logs of who checked which image and when, and exportable reports, are designed to show a client did its checking, which matters if a rights holder later complains.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
Agencies can charge for checking AI-made creative, a service line separate from producing it.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Japanese publishers are pressing the same copyright question from the other side: Yomiuri, Nikkei and Asahi are pursuing Perplexity in Tokyo, and the Japan Newspaper Association is pressing for opt-out rules. Hakuhodo's product addresses the risk of generated output resembling protected work, the mirror of the publishers' complaint about protected work feeding the models.

Counter-parallel: Spotify adopted the DDEX standard in May to label AI-generated tracks through existing licensing metadata. Spotify chose to label AI content at the source; Hakuhodo checks finished creative after it is made.

Consensus view: Hakuhodo's release presents the checker as a risk screen, not a legal opinion. It scores similarity 'from multiple perspectives such as meaning and structure' using several algorithms, uses generative AI to build its search keywords, and leaves the final rights decision with the client.

Counter-view: The tool's own limits show where liability sits. By stating that it 'does not determine whether copyright infringement has occurred', Hakuhodo sells the screening while keeping the legal risk of an infringing advert with the brand that runs it.

Key tension: Whether clients treat a low similarity score as clearance, which the release explicitly says it is not.

Sources:Hakuhodo

Mentions:Hakuhodo →Image Similarity Checker →Japan →Perplexity →Tokyo →European Commission →AI Governance Design →DDEX →Spotify →Nikkei Inc. →The Yomiuri Shimbun →The Asahi Shimbun →Japan Newspaper Association →

First Reported In

Update #13 · USA Today sues OpenAI but not Microsoft

Hakuhodo· 22 Oct 2026

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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.