‘Would-Be Bank Robbers’: Reddit Says Perplexity Steals Data

By Editorial Team

Perplexity AI Inc. and three data-scraping companies have been accused of acting like “would-be bank robbers” by Reddit. The social media platform alleges that these companies bypassed Reddit’s data security measures to collect users’ “continuous stream of real-time and creative copyrighted works” for use in Perplexity AI’s generative text products. The lawsuit was filed in New York federal court.

Reddit claims that the defendants engaged in unauthorized data scraping to gather copyrighted content from its platform. The lawsuit highlights the importance of protecting intellectual property rights and data security in the digital age.

According to the complaint filed by Reddit, the defendants’ actions not only violated Reddit’s terms of service but also infringed upon the copyrights of its users. The lawsuit seeks damages for the alleged infringement and requests an injunction to prevent further unauthorized data scraping.

The case, which is currently before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, involves several prominent companies, including Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, OpenAI OpCo LLC, and Reddit Inc. Law firms Bartlit Beck and Wollmuth Maher are representing the parties involved in the lawsuit.

This legal battle underscores the ongoing challenges faced by online platforms in protecting user-generated content and combating data scraping activities. As the case unfolds, it will likely shed light on the legal implications of data scraping and the boundaries of intellectual property rights in the digital realm.