Perplexity AI Defended After Cloudflare Accusation Sparks Controversy

Perplexity AI faces criticism from Cloudflare over web scraping, but many defend it. Here's what this debate means for the future of AI bots.
Matilda
Perplexity AI Defended After Cloudflare Accusation Sparks Controversy
Understanding the Perplexity AI vs Cloudflare Dispute Perplexity AI vs Cloudflare has become a trending discussion following recent claims that the AI search engine ignored standard website protocols and scraped web content without permission. According to Cloudflare, Perplexity bypassed restrictions clearly outlined in a site’s robots.txt file using tactics that made its bot look like a human browser. This sparked an immediate backlash from Cloudflare’s CEO, who publicly criticized such behavior as deceptive and likened it to hacker-level activity. Yet, the response wasn’t one-sided. Many online users and tech voices jumped to Perplexity’s defense, raising an important question: should AI bots acting on behalf of users be treated like bots—or like human users? Image : Google Why the Perplexity AI vs Cloudflare Conflict Matters The heart of the Perplexity AI vs Cloudflare controversy lies in how we define and handle AI access to online information. Cloudflare’s experiment involved a newly…