Reddit sued AI startup Perplexity and three data-scraping firms Wednesday, alleging they collected and resold Reddit posts without permission.
According to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and SerpApi scraped Reddit data via Google search results, and Perplexity purchased it from at least one of the vendors.
The lawsuit claims the defendants masked their identities, hid their locations, and disguised web scrapers to bypass Reddit’s security measures. Reddit says it caught Perplexity “red-handed” using digital markers to confirm the AI startup was accessing scraped content, and that the company ignored a cease-and-desist warning about the commercial use of its data.
“In fact, Perplexity’s citations to Reddit increased forty-fold after Reddit told it to stop,” the complaint states. “As an advertised client of SerpApi, there can be little doubt where and how Perplexity is getting its illicit Reddit data.”
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Reddit’s content has become a sought-after asset for AI companies, which rely on massive datasets to train models and surface relevant results. The company has licensed its data to OpenAI and Google but is taking legal action against firms it says are using its assets without permission, following a similar lawsuit against Anthropic earlier this year.
“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. “Defendants Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and SerpApi-ranging from a Lithuanian scraper to a former Russian botnet-are textbook examples. Perplexity is a willing customer of at least one of these scrapers, choosing to buy stolen data rather than enter into a lawful agreement with Reddit itself.”
ADWEEK has reached out to Perplexity, Oxylabs, and SerpApi for comment. AWMProxy could not immediately be reached for comment.
