What Reddit vs Perplexity lawsuit could mean for your content

When Reddit filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, it wasn’t just another tech rivalry dispute. It sparked a much bigger debate: who really owns the data that powers artificial intelligence, and where does “fair use” end?

At its heart, this case is about control and value. For website owners, creators and hosting providers, the outcome could redefine how online content is accessed, re-used and protected in an increasingly AI-driven world.

For decades, the internet has been a space where content could be freely shared, indexed and discovered. But that balance is shifting fast. Generative AI tools don’t simply index content anymore; they absorb and repurpose it, often without giving credit or compensation to the original creators.

According to Reddit, Perplexity AI crossed that line. The lawsuit claims Perplexity’s crawlers bypassed access restrictions by using Google’s search index as a back door to scrape data that wasn’t meant to be publicly available.

To prove it, Reddit reportedly created a hidden “test post” visible only to Google’s crawlers. When that post appeared in Perplexity’s summaries, Reddit said the proof was undeniable. 

Perplexity, however, disagrees. It insists it doesn’t scrape or store Reddit data but merely summarises publicly available content – similar to how search engines show snippets. The company maintains it is being unfairly targeted for using information that’s already in the public…