Cloudflare finds that Perplexity AI is ‚repeatedly modifying‘ the company’s web-crawling bots to evade data-scraping measures on third-party websites.
Search engine provider Perplexity AI is accused of acting like „North Korean hackers“ after the company’s bots were found crawling websites with anti-scraping rules in place.
The accusation comes from Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure provider that’s developed safeguards to prevent AI companies from scraping data from third-party websites. On Monday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince blasted Perplexity AI for invasive web crawling. (The AI company has also been found scraping data from media websites.)
“Some supposedly ‘reputable’ AI companies act more like North Korean hackers. Time to name, shame, and hard block them,’ Prince tweeted.
Cloudflare conducted an investigation that allegedly found Perplexity AI “repeatedly modifying” the company’s web-crawling bots to evade data-scraping measures on third-party websites.
In response, Cloudflare has delisted Perplexity AI as a “verified bot,” lumping the company’s web crawlers in with other untrusted activity, which could make it harder for it to index content.
