Reddit Sues Perplexity AI, Calling Its Data Collection ‘Industrial-Scale Theft’

The rise of artificial intelligence has also given rise to a wave of controversies and the latest one involves Reddit taking Perplexity AI to court.

Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity in a New York federal court, accusing it of illegally scraping Reddit’s data to train its AI-powered search tool. The social media platform claims Perplexity and three other companies - Oxylabs (Lithuania), AWMProxy (Russia), and SerpApi (Texas) - bypassed its data protection systems to collect huge amounts of content from Reddit without permission.

According to the complaint, as reported by Reuters,  Perplexity “desperately needs” this stolen data to fuel its so-called “answer engine.” Reddit argues that this amounts to “industrial-scale data laundering,” as AI companies compete to access human-written content to make their chatbots smarter.

Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, Ben Lee, said in a statement that AI companies are locked in a race for quality content, and this pressure has created a shady market for data scraping. He added that Reddit won’t tolerate such practices, especially since the platform has legally licensed its data to tech giants like Google and OpenAI for AI training.

Perplexity, on the other hand, denied the allegations, saying its approach to building AI tools is “principled and responsible.” The company said it aims to provide “factual answers with accurate AI” and will continue to defend openness and public access to information.

Other companies named in the lawsuit also responded. A SerpApi spokesperson said it “strongly disagrees” with Reddit’s claims and plans to fight them in court. Oxylabs expressed surprise, saying Reddit never contacted them directly before filing the case. AWMProxy could not be reached for comment.

Reddit revealed that it had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity last year, but instead of backing off, Perplexity allegedly increased its references to Reddit content by forty times.

Now, Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court order to prevent Perplexity from using its data.

This lawsuit is part of a growing trend wherein more and more publishers, media outlets, and platforms are pushing back against AI companies that use online content without permission.

Inputs from Reuters report

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