Is Your AI Chatbot Snitching? A New Lawsuit Alleges This Company Shared Data With Tech Giants

The lawsuit claims that Perplexity’s incognito mode is a ‘sham,’ and that the company shared conversations with Meta and Google.

BY CHLOE AIELLO, REPORTER @CHLOBO_ILO

Illustration: Getty Images

Perplexity isn’t just answering your questions, it’s spying on you—at least according to a new class-action lawsuit.

Filed in California, the lawsuit alleges that Perplexity collected data from user conversations with the AI-powered browser, then shared it with Meta and Google for advertising purposes—even when incognito mode was activated.

On behalf of an anonymous man from Utah and a class of similar users, the complaint alleges Perplexity shared IP addresses, email addresses, geolocation, and—in some cases—entire transcripts of conversations on a range of topics including legal and tax advice, health issues, and investing.

“No reasonable person would have expected that Perplexity would share complete transcripts of their conversations with Perplexity’s AI Machine with companies like Meta and Google. But that is what Perplexity did,” the lawsuit reads.

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The data allegedly was not anonymized. The suit further alleges that data collection began from the moment a user landed on Perplexity’s home page, and happened regardless of whether a user paid for a subscription or used Perplexity’s “incognito mode.”

“Perplexity never informed its users that their entire Conversational Dialogues with its AI Machine would be shared with Meta and Google for the purpose of commercially exploiting that information,” reads the text of the lawsuit. “Nor did Perplexity ever inform its users that its ‘Incognito’ mode was a sham or that interacting with Perplexity’s AI Machine in Incognito mode would not protect users from having the contents of their communications shared with Meta and Google.”

The complaint further alleges that full conversations between Perplexity and unsubscribed users are available through a URL and publicly accessible, and that the tracking technologies that Perplexity embedded in its platform amount to planting a “bug” on its users for commercial gain.

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