Amazon Probes Claims of Data Scraping Abuse

### Amazon Investigates Perplexity AI for Content Scraping

#### Background of the Investigation

Amazon’s cloud division has initiated an investigation into Perplexity AI, a startup specializing in AI-powered search. The investigation centers on allegations that Perplexity ​AI has been ‌scraping content from ⁣various ‌news websites without permission.

#### Evidence of Unauthorized Access

WIRED’s investigation revealed that Perplexity AI accessed Condé Nast’s⁣ websites using an unpublished IP address—44.221.181.252. This⁢ IP⁣ address, linked to an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance ⁣hosted on AWS, visited Condé Nast properties hundreds ​of times over the past three ⁤months. Despite Condé Nast’s engineers blocking Perplexity’s ‌crawler via a robots.txt file, the startup managed to​ bypass these restrictions.

#### Broader Implications

The machine associated ⁣with Perplexity AI has also been detected ⁢crawling other major news‌ websites that prohibit ‍bot access. Representatives from The‌ Guardian, Forbes, and The ⁤New York Times confirmed that the same IP address appeared on their servers multiple times.

#### ​AWS’s Role ⁢and Response

WIRED traced the IP address⁢ to an AWS-hosted virtual machine, prompting AWS to investigate whether using its infrastructure to scrape websites that forbid it violates ​their terms of service.

#### Perplexity AI’s Defense

Last week, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responded to ⁤WIRED’s findings, stating that the questions⁤ posed reflected a “deep and fundamental misunderstanding‌ of ‍how Perplexity and the Internet work.” However, he also mentioned that the company⁤ is ​taking steps⁤ to prevent potential copyright violations.

#### Industry Reactions

Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, commented on the situation:

“By default, AI companies should assume they have no right to take and reuse publishers’ content without permission,”

Kint added that if Perplexity⁤ is bypassing terms of service or robots.txt files, it​ indicates that something improper is happening.

#### Conclusion

The ⁣ongoing investigation by Amazon ‌and the reactions from industry leaders highlight the ⁤complexities and ethical considerations surrounding ​AI and​ content scraping. The outcome of this investigation could have significant implications for how⁤ AI startups operate in the future.