Reddit Sues Perplexity AI & Others, Alleges Data Theft

Reddit Sues Perplexity AI & Others, Alleges Data Theft

Reddit, the popular social media platform, has filed a lawsuit against three artificial intelligence companies in a New York federal court, accusing them of unlawfully scraping and stealing Reddit users’ comments for personal gain, according to reliable reports.

The three entities named in the suit include San Francisco-based Perplexity, the maker of an AI chatbot and “answer engine” that directly competes with Google and ChatGPT in online search results.

Earlier, Reddit had also filed a similar lawsuit against another AI company, Anthropic, in June.

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The latest lawsuit also names Oxylabs UAB — a Lithuanian data-scraping company, AWMProxy — a web domain, and Texas-based startup SerpApi.

Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee issued a statement on Wednesday, asserting that Reddit hosts “the largest and most dynamic collection of human conversation across the globe.” He added that data scrapers have been bypassing technological protections to steal content and later sell it to clients for training AI models.

Lee further alleged that, unable to scrape Reddit’s content directly, these scrapers hide their identities and locations before selling the stolen data to their clients. He claimed Perplexity is a “willing customer” of such data, choosing to buy it instead of entering into a legal agreement with Reddit.

Reddit compared these companies to “bank robbers who can’t access the bank vault but instead break into an armored truck.”

According to reports, Perplexity stated that it had not yet received any lawsuit but vowed to “fight vigorously for users’ rights” and to stand firm against any threats to openness and public interest.

Meanwhile, Oxylabs, SerpApi, and AWMProxy have not issued any official statements regarding the lawsuit.

Reddit’s earlier case against Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, was filed in California Superior Court but later transferred to federal court, where a hearing is scheduled to take place in January.