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Amazon is reviewing allegations that Perplexity AI<\/a>, an artificial intelligence<\/a> startup, has been scraping content from major news websites without permission.<\/p>\n An Amazon spokesperson said on Friday (June 28) that the company is looking into several reports from WIRED<\/a> and Forbes<\/a> that claim that Perplexity has been accessing content from websites that explicitly prohibit such scraping practices. Perplexity operates using servers provided by Amazon Web Services<\/a> (AWS).<\/p>\n The representative also noted that all AWS clients are required to adhere to the instructions in the robots.txt file. These files are generally used on websites to instruct bots and web crawlers to refrain from scraping their data, whether for generative AI tools or other uses.<\/p>\n \u201cAWS\u2019s terms of service prohibit abusive and illegal activities and our customers are responsible for complying with those terms. We routinely receive reports of alleged abuse from a variety of sources and engage our customers to understand those reports,\u201d the representative said.<\/p>\n Forbes\u2019 editor and chief content officer, Randall Lane, charged Perplexity with committing \u201ccynical theft,\u201d accusing the company of creating \u201cknockoff stories\u201d that contain \u201ceerily similar wording\u201d and \u201centirely lifted fragments\u201d from its articles.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cMore egregiously, the post, which looked and read like a piece of journalism, didn\u2019t mention Forbes at all, other than a line at the bottom of every few paragraphs that mentioned \u2018sources,\u2019 and a very small icon that looked to be the \u2018F\u2019 from the Forbes logo \u2013 if you squinted.\u201d<\/p>\n The San Francisco-based AI search startup, Perplexity, once celebrated by top tech investors like Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos<\/a>, has recently faced scrutiny over plagiarism accusations.<\/p>\n Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, denied allegations that his company was \u201cignoring the Robot Exclusions Protocol and then lying about it.\u201d Srinivas acknowledged to Fast Company<\/a> that Perplexity does use third-party web crawlers in addition to its own, and confirmed that the bot identified by WIRED was among them.<\/p>\n However, he added, \u201cIt was accurately pointed out by Forbes that they preferred a more prominent highlighting of the source.\u201d Srinivas also mentioned that sources are now more prominently spotlighted.<\/p>\n ReadWrite has reached out to Amazon and Perplexity for comment.<\/p>\nHas Perplexity AI plagiarized content?<\/h2>\n