Perplexity under fire: Cloudflare says Perplexity’s AI bots faked their identities to bypass site blocks

Perplexity, the rising AI-powered search startup, is facing scrutiny after Cloudflare alleged that its AI bots used deceptive tactics to access websites that had explicitly blocked them. According to Cloudflare’s report, Perplexity’s bots masked their identity, altered user agents to impersonate browsers like Google Chrome, and rotated IP addresses to evade detection. These actions allegedly allowed the bots to scrape content from thousands of restricted domains. The accusations reignite concerns about AI companies bypassing consent protocols and exploiting publisher content without permission.

Cloudflare, one of the largest internet infrastructure providers globally, claims this behavior was observed across tens of thousands of domains and millions of daily requests.