Perplexity Faces Backlash for Ignoring Website Scraping Restrictions

2025-08-04 · TechCrunch AI · Original

Cloudflare, a leading internet security firm, has raised concerns over Perplexity, an AI-driven search engine, for allegedly disregarding explicit requests from websites to block scraping. According to Cloudflare, the platform was detected crawling and extracting data from sites that had implemented technical barriers to prevent such actions. This revelation has sparked a debate about ethical practices in AI data collection, highlighting the importance of respecting website owners' rights and privacy. As AI continues to evolve, the challenge of balancing data accessibility with ethical constraints remains at the forefront of industry discussions. The incident underscores the need for clearer guidelines and responsible behavior among AI developers to foster trust and cooperation between technology and web content creators. As scrutiny increases, Perplexity's practices will likely be closely monitored, prompting a reevaluation of how AI interacts with web resources in the future.