Reddit sues Perplexity for using user posts to train its AI system

The dispute over the use of protected content in training artificial intelligence systems has flared up again. This Wednesday, the social network Reddit led to startup Perplexity to court, accusing it of illegally scraping content posted by users of the platform to train its AI-powered search engine.

The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, also involves three other companies that, according to Reddit, helped Perplexity in the massive data collection: the Lithuanian Oxylabs, the Russian AWMProxy and the North American SerpApi.

According to the complaint, these companies bypassed the platform’s security barriers, “masking their identities, hiding their locations and disguising their web scrapers [programas de recolhas de dados] like ordinary people”, to access copyrighted content.

Reddit accuses Perplexity of having worked with at least one of these three entities to obtain material from the siteclaiming that startup “desperately needs” this data to feed its “answer engine”.

“AI companies are engaged in an arms race for the quality of human content – and this pressure has fueled an economy of industrial-scale ‘data laundering’,” said Ben Lee, chief legal officer at Reddit, as quoted by Reuters..

Perplexity, for its part, rejects the accusations and considers the process a “show of force” on the part of Reddit.

Oxylabs and SerpApi stated that they had not yet been notified, but assured that they will defend themselves in court. Oxylabs governance administrator Denas Grybauskas told Financial Times who was “shocked and disappointed” with the process, adding that the social network did not contact them in advance.

Reddit, which went public in March 2024, has sought to transform access to its vast collection of discussions into a strategic asset. The company has already signed data licensing agreements with Google and OpenAI, agreements that represent around 10% of its revenue, according to director of operations, Jen Wong, to Adweek.