On Wednesday, Reddit Inc. sued Perplexity AI and three “data scrapers,” alleging the companies are circumventing its technological safeguards to unlawfully acquire Reddit’s copyrighted data to “feed” Perplexity’s artificial intelligence model.

Reddit is one of the largest online discussion platforms in the world and “comprises nearly two decades of human conversational data organized across interest-based, user-created communities (referred to as “subreddits”) spanning subjects on virtually every topic imaginable.” According to Reddit, this human-generated content is “widely seen as invaluable to AI companies,” who require a consistent source of new data to “train and operate their AI products.” Reddit “does not permit unauthorized commercialization of Reddit content absent an express agreement with guardrails in place to ensure that Reddit and its users’ rights are protected.”