Perplexity sued by Reddit: The case involves the illegal acquisition of data for AI training

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Reddit is suing Perplexity AI because it claims the company illegally collected comments from its users. Reddit is also taking legal action against other companies, including those who work with Perplexity. This situation raises important questions about how companies gather data to train their artificial intelligence systems. Perplexity AI has stated it will strongly defend what it believes is the public’s right to access information.

Reddit sues Perplexity

Okay, so this is wild. Reddit just filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, Oxylabs UAB, AWMProxy, and SerpApi in federal court here in New York. Apparently, Perplexity is actually a customer of SerpApi. Basically, Reddit is saying these companies were scraping data from their platform without permission, and they’re laying out all the details in their official statement.

Web scraping tools are used to collect data from websites by getting around security measures, and this data is then sold to companies who need it for things like training AI models. Reddit is a particularly attractive target for these scrapers because it contains a massive and constantly updated record of discussions and opinions.

So, the people Reddit is suing don’t agree with what Reddit’s saying. And Perplexity, one of the companies involved, is basically saying they’re fighting for all of us online – trying to protect the community.

We are committed to providing honest and reliable information using accurate AI technology. We strongly oppose any attempts to undermine openness and the public good.

Oxylabs believes that public data should not be controlled by any single company, and they suggest that companies which do control it might be overcharging for access.

Reddit users have noticed that some companies are collecting its data in a sneaky way – by bypassing Google’s security measures and using information from Google search results. One user described it as stealing data rather than legitimately accessing it. While Google and OpenAI have official agreements with Reddit to use its data for AI training – with Google reportedly paying $60 million per year – not all companies can afford such an arrangement.

In June, Reddit filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for a similar reason.

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2025-10-24 12:05