Social media giant Reddit
has launched a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Perplexity, alleging that it illegally scraped user posts to train its AI model, marking the latest data-rights clash between content owners and the AI industry.
The complaint filed in New York federal court on Wednesday also named three defendants, which Reddit says helped Perplexity collect its data: Lithuanian data scraper Oxylabs, “former Russian botnet” AWMProxy, and Texas startup SerpApi.
Reddit alleged that the three smaller entities were able to extract its copyrighted content “by masking their identities, hiding their locations and disguising their web scrapers as regular people.”
Perplexity, which runs an AI-powered search engine, denied the allegations and accused Reddit of “extortion” and opposition to an open internet, while SerpApi told CNBC it “strongly disagrees” with Reddit’s claims and intends to defend itself in court.
