Reddit sues to block Perplexity from scraping Google search results

In a significant legal move, Reddit has filed a lawsuit against the AI search engine Perplexity, accusing it of collaborating with other companies to unlawfully scrape content from Reddit via Google search results. This practice allegedly circumvents the anti-scraping measures that both Google and Reddit have invested heavily in to protect their content. The lawsuit claims that while Perplexity markets itself as “the world’s first answer engine,” it is merely repurposing information without proper authorization. According to Reddit, Perplexity's answer engine relies on a different corporation’s large language model to sift through extensive Google search results, attempting to respond to user queries based on that data. The lawsuit contends that Perplexity can only operate its service by improperly accessing and scraping Reddit content displayed in Google’s search results. Reddit has likened the actions of the companies involved in this alleged scheme to those of “bank robbers,” asserting that it caught Perplexity “red-handed” in the act of stealing content that it had no right to utilize. To substantiate its claims, Reddit conducted an experiment by posting content exclusively available in Google’s search result pages. Within hours, the same content appeared in queries made to Perplexity’s answer engine. The lawsuit argues that the only plausible way for Perplexity to obtain and use this content was through scraping Google’s search results. In response, Perplexity has denied any allegations of misconduct, stating that it summarizes discussions from Reddit and cites specific threads, similar to how any user might share links or posts. Perplexity has also suggested that Reddit’s actions could be a tactic to impose licensing fees for Reddit content, despite the acknowledgment that Perplexity does not create foundational models. They claim that Reddit's motivations may revolve around leveraging this lawsuit as a strategic move in its negotiations related to training data with Google and OpenAI.