Reddit sues Perplexity and data scraping firms
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Reddit is suing Perplexity and several data scraping companies alleging they are improperly taking content from its online forums.
Why it matters: The suit is the latest in a string of lawsuits against AI companies alleging their products infringe on publisher's intellectual property.
Driving the news: Reddit is accusing Perplexity and the other firms of what it dubs "data laundering," whereby the data firms scrape loads of data and then sell it to AI firms, in this case Perplexity.
- The lawsuit alleges that the defendants evade Reddit anti-scraping measures and circumvent Google's controls by scraping Reddit results from Google search.
What they're saying: "AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content — and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy," Reddit chief legal officer Ben Lee said in a statement.
- "Scrapers bypass technological protections to steal data, then sell it to clients hungry for training material. "
- "Defendants are similar to would-be bank robbers, who, knowing they cannot get into the bank vault, break into the armored truck carrying the cash instead," the suit says.
- "Perplexity has not received the lawsuit yet, but we will always fight vigorously for users' rights to freely and fairly access public knowledge," Perplexity told Axios in a statement. "We will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest."
The big picture: Perplexity is also facing suits from other publishers, including Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times and other newspapers, while similar lawsuits have been brought against OpenAI and others.
- OpenAI and Google have cut deals with Reddit to use its content to train models.
This story has been updated with a statement from Perplexity.
