The controversy over the practices of some artificial intelligence companies has escalated after Perplexity was accused of bypassing guidelines that prevent the collection of data from websites. A report issued by Cloudflare showed that the company not only ignored technical barriers, but also changed its digital identity while crawling to reach pages blocked against automated copying, by modifying the User Agent and changing the networks it connects to.
The report indicated that these activities spread across thousands of sites, with millions of requests per day, although Perplexity denied the accusations. Complaints from site owners confirmed that the company continued to crawl even after clear restrictions were imposed, raising concerns about privacy violations and content protection. This is not the first time, as Perplexity has previously been criticized for stealing content from news sites, prompting Cloudflare to launch a marketplace that allows site owners to charge fees for AI tools that crawl their content.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, acknowledged technical issues with the launch of GPT-5, such as erroneous switching between models and unstable performance, prompting the company to reintroduce previous models such as GPT-4o after user complaints.
As for Instagram, it faced widespread criticism for its new "Instagram Map" feature, which some considered a threat to privacy by revealing users' locations. Meta clarified that the feature is optional, and can be controlled or restricted through privacy settings.
These developments reflect the need for clearer regulation of AI work on the internet, balancing the freedom of access to data and the protection of digital rights, while setting controls that ensure compliance with ethical and societal standards.
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