Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, alleging wrongful data scraping. The well-known message board asserts that Perplexity, an AI company, engaged in unauthorized data scraping to enhance its AI system. The complaint, released by The Verge, identifies Perplexity along with AWMProxy, Oxylabs, and SerpApi, claiming that Perplexity worked in conjunction with at least one of these firms to collect data from Reddit without consent.

Although Reddit has established agreements with other AI firms, it has not entered into a partnership with Perplexity. Previously, Reddit sent a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity for scraping its content, yet it claims that Perplexity subsequently increased its use of Reddit data. Reddit says it caught Perplexity by creating a “test post” that was only accessible through Google’s search engine. Perplexity’s “answer engine” generated the content of the test post in a matter of hours, implying scraping of data from Google SERPs.

In response to The Verge, Perplexity stated, “Perplexity has not yet received the lawsuit, but we will always fight vigorously for users’ rights to freely and fairly access public knowledge. Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest.”

The result of the lawsuit is still uncertain, but Reddit’s strategy of allegedly catching Perplexity is considered particularly clever.