On Wednesday, Reddit filed a lawsuit against AI company Perplexity and three other companies alleging the AI company illegally scraped Reddit data through the use of data scraping companies based in Europe and Texas.

Scrapers bypass technical protections to steal data that can then be sold to clients who want the material for AI training. Reddit is a prime target because it is one of the largest and most dynamic collections of human conversation ever created,

Social media giant Reddit is suing Perplexity AI and three other firms over alleged “industrial-scale” scraping of posts from its website. Perplexity – a San Francisco-based startup with its own chatbot and “answer engine” – has allegedly skirted Reddit’s data protections to swipe posts from the site for its own use,

The lawsuit also accuses Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and SerpApi of helping Perplexity collect data by hiding their identities and mimicking normal user behaviour.

Reddit claims it caught Perplexity doing something it shouldn't have. The popular message board website filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, a notable AI firm, alleging that Perplexity engaged in improper data scraping to feed its AI program.

In its latest data-rights battle with the AI industry, Reddit has launched a suit against Perplexity alleging the AI company illegally scraped its users' posts.