Amazon is investigating claims that artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI is scraping content, including from prominent news sites, without approval.
Amazon spokeswoman Samantha Mayowa confirmed Friday that the company is evaluating the information it received from WIRED, which published findings earlier this month that Perplexity appears to be scraping content from websites that ban access to such activity. Perplexity uses servers in Amazon Web Services, also known as AWS.
Amazon's “terms of service prohibit abusive or illegal activity, and our customers are responsible for complying with these terms,” Mayowa said in a prepared statement. “We regularly receive reports of suspected abusive activity from a variety of sources and engage with customers to understand those reports.”
Perplexity spokeswoman Sarah Platnick said Friday that the company determined that its managed services were not crawling websites in a way that violated AWS's terms of service.
The San Francisco-based AI search startup is a favorite of big-name tech investors, including big names like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, but in recent weeks the company has found itself embroiled in a plagiarism scandal.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas forcefully defended the company after the company published an abridged news article that contained similar information and language to a Forbes investigative piece without citing the media or seeking permission. Forbes subsequently said it had found similar “copycat” articles that had been plagiarized from other publications.
Separately, the Associated Press found that another Perplexity product was fabricating fake quotes from real people.
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month, Srinivas said the company “has never plagiarized anyone's content. We don't train our engine on other people's content,” in part because the company simply aggregates what other people's AI systems generate.
But he added that “Forbes accurately noted that they would have preferred to highlight their sources more prominently.” He said that the sources are now highlighted more prominently.
