Reddit has filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI, accusing the startup and several proxy firms of large-scale scraping of Reddit content for AI training without permission. The company claims the defendants bypassed protections and used indirect scraping through Google results, even after receiving a cease-and-desist notice, intensifying Reddit’s accusations of willful exploitation.
The lawsuit represents a growing backlash from content platforms seeking to control and profit from the use of their data in artificial intelligence models. Reddit argues that while some companies, like Google and OpenAI, have negotiated formal licenses, Perplexity ignored such legal channels and continued to feed on Reddit’s user-generated discussions to train its systems.
This case could reshape the boundaries of data ownership in the AI industry. It questions whether publicly available content can be freely used to train algorithms or whether creators and platforms deserve compensation. The court’s decision may influence how future AI models are built, and whether they must disclose or pay for the sources that shaped their knowledge.
Reddit’s action follows a wave of lawsuits from media groups, authors, and online communities challenging what they call the “industrialization of free content.” As AI firms expand their reach, the tension between innovation and intellectual rights deepens. The outcome could mark a turning point in how digital knowledge is treated—as open commons or protected property.
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