Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity.
Reddit has accused Perplexity of illegally scraping its data to train Perplexity’s AI-based search engine.
The complaint also names three other companies allegedly involved in the data scraping.
Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity in a New York federal court, accusing the company of illegally scraping its data to train Perplexity’s AI-based search engine. The complaint also names three other companies allegedly involved in the data scraping. According to Reddit, the data-scraping companies bypassed its data protection measures to steal content that Perplexity “desperately needs” to power its “answer engine” system, reports Reuters.
SurveyThis case is part of a growing wave of lawsuits where content owners are taking legal action against tech companies for using copyrighted material without permission to train artificial intelligence systems. In June, Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, which is still ongoing.
“Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest,” Perplexity was quoted as saying in the report. Reddit’s chief legal officer, Ben Lee, said, “AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content – and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale ‘data laundering’ economy.”
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The social media platform, known for its thousands of topic-focused subreddit communities, pointed out in the lawsuit that it is one of the most frequently cited sources for AI-generated answers to user questions. Reddit has already licensed its content to major companies like Google and OpenAI for AI training.
The lawsuit claims that Lithuania-based Oxylabs, Russia-based AWMProxy, and Texas-based SerpApi scraped data from billions of Reddit search results without permission. Reddit alleges that Perplexity, which does not have a license to use Reddit’s content, collaborated with at least one of these scraping companies to obtain Reddit material.
“We strongly disagree with Reddit’s allegations and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court,” a SerpApi spokesperson said. Meanwhile, Oxylabs said that it was “shocked and disappointed by this news, as Reddit has made no attempt to speak with us directly,” and that it would defend itself against the accusations.
Reddit stated that it had sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter last year. Following that, Reddit says Perplexity “increased the volume of citations to Reddit forty-fold.” The company is seeking monetary damages and a court order to prevent Perplexity from using its content.
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Ayushi Jain
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