A Besieged Perplexity Is Becoming AI’s Pit Bull: Dave Lee

The way Perplexity AI Inc. frames it, the company is something of a freedom fighter for the open web. Its “answer engine” — don’t call it a chatbot — is democratizing access to information just as Google once did. And its Comet web browser, which can carry out some tasks on a user’s behalf, is a revolutionary time-saving tool.

But among some of its tech peers, Perplexity is becoming company non grata. Last week, Amazon.com Inc. sued the company to stop allowing Comet’s autonomous AI agent from browsing Amazon’s store on a customer’s behalf. A week earlier, Reddit Inc. alleged ...