To test this, Cloudflare says it created new domains with similar restrictions against Perplexity’s AI scrapers. It found that the startup will first attempt to access the sites by identifying itself as the names of its crawlers: “PerplexityBot” or “Perplexity-User.”

The feud underscores the need for new standards in AI-web interaction, as bot detection tools struggle to distinguish between helpful assistants and harmful scrapers.

Cloudflare is accusing Perplexity of using stealth crawlers to bypass site restrictions, triggering fresh concerns over how AI firms access web content.