Perplexity AI Under Fire In Lawsuit Alleging Privacy Violations

A class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday, alleging that Perplexity AI shared users’ personal information with Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, in violation of California privacy laws. The lawsuit — Doe v. Perplexity AI Inc., 3:26-cv-02803, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco) — filed by a Utah man identified as John Doe stated that he shared personal information about his taxes, investments and family finances with the AI chatbot, believing those conversations were private, Bloomberg first reported. Doe claimed the AI company integrated “undetectable” tracking software into its search engine code, which automatically sends users' conversations to Meta, Google and other third parties. “We have not been served any lawsuit that matches this description, so we are unable to verify its existence or claims," Jesse Dwyer, chief communications officer for Perplexity, wrote in a statement to Benzinga. The lawsuit also accused Meta and Google of violating state and federal computer privacy and fraud laws. Perplexity and Others in Court This was not the first time that Perplexity has been sued. Last month, a federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction preventing Perplexity from using its Comet browser's AI agent to enter password-protected areas of Amazon's website and make purchases for users. The lawsuit alleged the company deliberately disguised its AI agent as a regular Google Chrome browser session and was not transparent about its usage. Amazon also has another lawsuit against Perplexity over its "Buy with Pro" e-commerce feature, which Amazon alleged scrapped product listings without authorization. This was not the first case of artificial intelligence overstepping the boundaries of set rules and regulations. In a class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Julia Angwin — a contributing opinion editor at The New York Times — alleged Grammarly’s artificial intelligence tool Expert Review used her name and others’ without prior consent. Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, was facing a lawsuit from music rights management company BMG. According to a Rolling Stone report, BMG alleged Anthropic used lyrics from major artists to train its chatbot without obtaining proper authorization. In a more serious case, three Tennessee teenagers filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming its AI chatbot Grok created and spread sexualized images of them without consent, Reuters reported. Photo: Shutterstock