Reddit sues Perplexity and four other companies for illegally stealing content from Google search results to train AI
Social message board site Reddit has filed a lawsuit against four companies, including AI company Perplexity, alleging that they illegally stole data by scraping Reddit content that appeared in Google search results. Reddit also filed a lawsuit
Reddit Accuses 'Data Scraper' Companies of Theft - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/technology/reddit-data-scrapers-perplexity-theft.html
Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system | Reuters
Reddit sues Perplexity and three other companies for allegedly using its content without paying
In addition to Perplexity, Reddit is suing Austin, Texas-based SerpApi , Lithuania-based Oxylabs , and Russia-based AWMProxy .
Starting in 2023, Reddit began a business model where companies could access Reddit posts and use them to train their AI, and the company has signed licensing agreements with Google and OpenAI, paying a fee of $60 million per year.
Google to use API to retrieve Reddit posts in real time to train AI, Reddit is on the verge of an IPO - GIGAZINE
Reddit claims that by using Reddit content displayed in Google search results, it avoided paying these licensing fees. The company is seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting the four companies from selling previously scraped Reddit content as training data.
Among the companies sued, Perplexity has already been found to be using unlicensed content for training purposes, and has also been accused of ignoring robots.txt files that websites have in place to prevent scraping. When the allegations were filed, CEO Aravind Srinivas defended himself by saying, 'We don't ignore these in our own crawlers, but we also rely on third-party crawlers.'
According to Reddit, they have already asked Perplexity to stop scraping, but they were able to confirm that Perplexity continues to scrape by creating 'test posts that are inaccessible except through Google Search crawls.'
SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy have not commented on the lawsuit. Perplexity said, 'While we have not yet received the lawsuit, we will always vigorously fight for users' rights to free and fair access to public knowledge. Our approach remains principled and responsible, providing fact-based answers through accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats to openness and commerce.'
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in AI, Web Service, Posted by logc_nt