Daijiworld Media Network – New York

New York, Oct 23: Social media giant Reddit has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity and three other companies in a New York federal court, alleging unauthorized scraping of its content to train Perplexity’s AI-based search engine.

In its complaint, Reddit accused the companies of bypassing its data protection measures to access information that Perplexity reportedly “desperately needs” to power its AI “answer engine.” This legal action follows Reddit’s earlier lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic filed in June, which remains ongoing.

Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee stated that AI companies are in an “arms race for quality human content,” fueling what he called an “industrial-scale ‘data laundering’ economy.” The platform, home to thousands of interest-based communities or “subreddits,” claimed it is the most cited source for AI-generated answers and has already licensed content to companies like Google and OpenAI for AI training purposes.

According to the lawsuit, Lithuania-based Oxylabs, Russia-based AWMProxy, and Texas-based SerpApi scraped Reddit’s content from billions of search results without permission. Reddit further alleged that Perplexity, which lacks a license to use Reddit content, collaborated with at least one of these companies to obtain its material.

Perplexity, in response, said it remains committed to providing “factual answers with accurate AI” and will defend itself vigorously in court. SerpApi and Oxylabs also expressed disagreement with the allegations, while AWMProxy could not be reached for comment.

Reddit added that despite sending a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity last year, the AI startup allegedly increased the volume of citations to Reddit forty-fold. The case highlights growing concerns among content owners about the unauthorized use of copyrighted material for AI training.