Reddit, Inc. has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity AI in a New York federal court, accusing the San Francisco-based startup of illegally scraping and exploiting its vast database of user-generated content to train AI models without authorization. The lawsuit also names Oxylabs, SerpApi, and AWMProxy as co-defendants, alleging they assisted Perplexity in concealing its activities by “masking identities and hiding locations.”
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, Benjamin Lee, characterized the case as a challenge to what he described as an “industrial-scale data laundering economy,” asserting that “AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content.” The company claims that Perplexity’s alleged practices not only violated copyright law but also undermined the value of Reddit’s data licensing agreements with partners such as OpenAI and Google, which together contribute nearly 10% of Reddit’s annual revenue.
Perplexity, which operates an AI-powered answer engine, has denied all allegations, labeling Reddit’s actions as “extortion.” In a statement posted on Reddit, the company said, “Bowing to strong arm tactics just isn’t how we do business,” insisting that it does not train AI models on Reddit data and therefore sees no reason to sign a licensing agreement. Perplexity maintains that its platform only summarizes and cites publicly available content, a stance that it says keeps it within legal boundaries. Similarly, SerpApi told CNBC it “strongly disagrees” with Reddit’s claims and plans to defend itself vigorously in court.
According to the complaint, Reddit’s posts have become frequently cited sources in AI-generated answers provided by Perplexity, suggesting deep integration of Reddit’s data into the company’s outputs. The lawsuit follows a similar action Reddit filed against Anthropic, reflecting the social platform’s broader campaign to safeguard its community-generated data amid rising tensions between content owners and AI developers.
As the demand for high-quality training data intensifies, this case could set an important precedent in determining how AI companies may access, use, and attribute online content — potentially reshaping the legal and ethical frameworks surrounding data ownership in the AI era.
