Reddit Raises Lawsuit Against Perplexity Over Data Theft
Social media platform Reddit has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence-based search engine developer Perplexity in the U.S. Federal Court of New York, alleging that Perplexity and three other companies illegally accessed and harvested vast amounts of Reddit’s data by bypassing its protection systems—data that was reportedly used to power their search engine, according to Reuters.
Reddit’s legal representatives stated that such unauthorized data extraction constitutes a violation of content creators’ intellectual property rights. Earlier in June this year, Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against another AI company, Anthropic, over comparable data misuse.
Perplexity, in a statement, claimed that it operates “under the principles of accuracy and transparency” and that its use of publicly available information is legitimate. Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee remarked, “The competition among artificial intelligence companies over human-generated content has now taken the form of industrial-scale data theft.”
Reddit has requested the court to order Perplexity to cease using its data and to award compensation for the alleged violations.
