In a major escalation of tensions between social media platforms and artificial intelligence companies, Reddit has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity AI, accusing the San Francisco-based startup of illegally scraping its vast database of user-generated posts.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Wednesday, claims that Perplexity and its partners harvested Reddit’s copyrighted material without consent to train their AI systems. This case joins a growing wave of legal battles challenging how AI firms collect and use online data.

Alongside Perplexity, Reddit also named three additional entities in the suit — Lithuanian data firm Oxylabs, Texas-based SerpApi, and AWMProxy, which Reddit described as a “former Russian botnet.” According to the complaint, these groups allegedly helped Perplexity disguise its scraping activities by masking identities, hiding locations, and impersonating normal users.

Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, described the issue as part of a larger industry crisis. “AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content,” Lee said, calling the situation an “industrial-scale data laundering economy.”

Reddit claims Perplexity relied heavily on scraped material — often accessed indirectly through Google search results — to fuel its AI-driven “answer engine.”

Perplexity Denies Wrongdoing

In response, Perplexity stated that it has not yet been served with the lawsuit and defended its mission to make information accessible.

“We will always fight vigorously for users’ rights to freely and fairly access public knowledge,” the company said in a statement, asserting that its methods are “principled and responsible.”

Oxylabs and SerpApi also denied any misconduct, noting they have not been formally notified. Denas Grybauskas, an Oxylabs executive, criticised Reddit for bypassing direct dialogue, saying, “Reddit has made no attempt to speak with us directly,” and vowed to protect the firm’s “reputation as an industry leader in public data collection.”

Negotiations and Broader Context

Sources cited by the Financial Times revealed that Reddit had previously confronted Perplexity over the alleged scraping and even offered a paid data access partnership, which Perplexity’s founder Aravind Srinivas reportedly declined. Reddit also reached out to Google, urging the tech giant to investigate whether Perplexity exploited its search engine to bypass restrictions.

The dispute highlights a broader legal and ethical struggle surrounding AI data sourcing. Since the surge of generative AI models, multiple lawsuits from authors, media outlets, and online communities have accused tech companies of lifting copyrighted material without consent or compensation.

Ironically, Reddit itself has signed lucrative data licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, allowing them legitimate access to its platform for AI training. However, the company argues that Perplexity and its partners used evasive scraping techniques to obtain similar data unlawfully.

This isn’t Reddit’s first clash with an AI developer. In June 2025, it sued Anthropic, alleging that the startup scraped Reddit more than 100,000 times in a year — a claim Anthropic denied while vowing to “defend ourselves vigorously.”

With this latest lawsuit, Reddit appears intent on reinforcing its message: AI companies must pay if they want to use the internet’s collective human wisdom.