Amazon probes perplexity AI for potential AWS policy breaches

Amazon probes perplexity AI over potential AWS policy violations for scraping restricted websites

Amazon's cloud division is investigating Perplexity AI to ascertain if it breached AWS rules by scraping websites that attempted to block such actions. The scrutiny comes in response to concerns raised by WIRED and other media outlets regarding Perplexity's operations.

Investigation and findings

An AWS representative, speaking anonymously to WIRED, confirmed Amazon's investigation into whether Perplexity AI violated its terms of service by disregarding the Robots Exclusion Protocol. This protocol, while not legally binding, typically requires compliance as part of a website's terms of service. Perplexity AI faces allegations of using AWS infrastructure to scrape content from websites that explicitly prohibited such actions through their robots.txt files. These allegations surfaced after Forbes reported Perplexity's scraping of its content, a claim later corroborated by investigations from WIRED.

Perplexity AI’s response

Following WIRED's report, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas initially downplayed concerns, suggesting a misunderstanding of the company's operations and internet norms. Later, he attributed the controversial scraping activities to a third-party company under a nondisclosure agreement. Despite the backlash, Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick affirmed the company's cooperation with Amazon's inquiries. She maintained that PerplexityBot generally adheres to the robots.txt protocol, although acknowledging exceptions when users specify certain URLs.

Perplexity AI has garnered support from the Jeff Bezos family fund and Nvidia, reflecting its recent valuation at $3 billion.