Reddit Escalates AI Data Wars with Perplexity Lawsuit Over Content Scraping Allegations

Reddit’s Legal Battle Expands to Perplexity

Social media platform Reddit has intensified its campaign against artificial intelligence companies with a new lawsuit targeting Perplexity AI, alleging systematic copyright infringement through unauthorized data scraping. This legal action, filed in New York federal court, represents the second major lawsuit Reddit has initiated against AI firms in recent months, following similar proceedings against Anthropic in June.

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The complaint alleges that Perplexity, along with three data scraping partners—Lithuanian firm Oxylabs, “former Russian botnet” AWMProxy, and Texas-based SerpApi—engaged in coordinated efforts to extract Reddit’s user-generated content while concealing their identities and locations. According to court documents, these entities allegedly disguised their web scrapers as regular human users to bypass Reddit’s technological protections.

The Data Licensing Strategy Behind the Lawsuits

Reddit’s legal offensive coincides with the company’s strategic pivot toward monetizing its vast repository of user conversations through formal licensing agreements. The platform, which hosts over 100,000 specialized communities, has positioned its content as premium training material for AI development. Recent licensing deals with industry giants Google and OpenAI reportedly contribute nearly 10% of Reddit’s revenue, highlighting the significant financial stakes involved.

Ben Lee, Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, characterized the situation as an “arms race for quality human content” that has spawned what he describes as an “industrial-scale ‘data laundering’ economy.” In his statement, Lee emphasized that scrapers who bypass technological protections to steal data are feeding an increasingly hungry market for AI training materials.

Perplexity’s Defense and Counter-Allegations

Perplexity has mounted an aggressive defense against Reddit’s claims, accusing the social media company of “extortion” and contradicting the principles of an open internet. In a statement posted directly on Reddit’s platform, Perplexity argued that it doesn’t train its AI models on Reddit content but merely summarizes and cites public discussions, making licensing agreements unnecessary.

“A year ago, after explaining this, Reddit insisted we pay anyway, despite lawfully accessing Reddit data,” the company stated. “Bowing to strong arm tactics just isn’t how we do business.” Perplexity further characterized the lawsuit as a “show of force in Reddit’s training data negotiations with Google and OpenAI,” suggesting the legal action serves as strategic positioning rather than genuine copyright enforcement., as as previously reported

The Broader Implications for AI Development

This legal confrontation occurs against the backdrop of increasing tension between content platforms and AI companies regarding fair use of publicly available information. AI researchers have long valued Reddit’s moderated conversations for their ability to help chatbots generate more natural-sounding responses, making the platform’s content particularly valuable for training purposes.

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Reddit’s lawsuit notes that after sending Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter, the AI company allegedly “increased the volume of citations to Reddit forty-fold”—a detail that underscores the contentious nature of the relationship between the two companies.

The Future of Public Data Access

As Reddit pursues its data monetization strategy, the Perplexity case raises fundamental questions about how public online content should be regulated and compensated. Perplexity’s statement lamented what it called “a sad example of what happens when public data becomes a big part of a public company’s business model,” highlighting the tension between open internet principles and corporate revenue generation.

The outcome of this lawsuit could establish important precedents for:

• How AI companies access and use public web content
• The legal boundaries of web scraping practices
• The monetization strategies of user-generated content platforms
• The balance between open information access and copyright protection

With neither side showing signs of backing down, this legal battle represents a critical front in the ongoing war over data rights in the AI era—a conflict that will likely shape how artificial intelligence evolves and how online platforms profit from their users’ contributions.

References

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