Reddit Files Lawsuit Against Perplexity AI and Others
Reddit has taken legal action against the AI company Perplexity AI, along with three other entities, claiming they are involved in a large-scale, illegal operation to “scrape” user comments for profit. This lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York, targets Perplexity, which is based in San Francisco and develops a competitive AI chatbot and search engine.
Other parties named in the lawsuit include LithuaniA’s Oxylabs UAB, a data-scraping firm, a web domain identified as AWMProxy—described by Reddit as a former Russian botnet—and Texas startup SerpApi, which lists Perplexity as a client.
This is the second lawsuit Reddit has filed, having already sued AI company Anthropic back in June. However, this latest case is notable because it focuses not just on an AI company but also on the lesser-known services that support the AI industry by gathering online text for training purposes.
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, Ben Lee, pointed out that scrapers bypass protective measures to illegally acquire data and then sell it to clients eager for training content. Reddit is a prominent target for such practices due to the vast and lively collection of human conversations it hosts.
The lawsuit claims these companies are unfairly competing and benefiting at Reddit’s expense, with some allegedly violating U.S. copyright laws. In response, Perplexity stated that they hadn’t received the lawsuit but are committed to defending users’ rights to access public information freely. They stressed their responsible approach to providing accurate AI-generated answers.
SerpApi’s customer success director expressed strong disagreement with Reddit’s claims, indicating their intent to defend against the allegations. Meanwhile, Oxylabs expressed surprise and disappointment over the lawsuit, asserting their intent to vigorously contest it. A representative mentioned that no one should claim ownership of public data not belonging to them, suggesting Reddit’s actions might stem from an effort to sell the same data at inflated prices.
Reddit’s comparison of these data-scraping firms to “would-be bank robbers” underscores the seriousness of the allegations. The lawsuit claims these companies circumvent Reddit’s own security measures and Google’s controls to extract content directly from search results. Lee noted that because these firms cannot access Reddit directly, they disguise their identities to unlawfully collect content.
This approach mirrors arguments from Reddit’s earlier lawsuit against Anthropic, where the company alleged that Anthropic ignored requests to stop using its content. That case has since moved to federal court and is set for a hearing in January.
Besides books and news articles, platforms like Wikipedia and Reddit contain vast amounts of text that help train AI algorithms in understanding human language. Previously, Reddit has forged licensing agreements with companies like Google and OpenAI, allowing them to pay for access to user-generated content, which is crucial for their AI training.
