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A massive 135-page lawsuit against artificial intelligence developer Perplexity AI Inc. landed in federal court in San Francisco on March 31.
The class action suit claims that tracking tools embedded in Perplexity’s code sent user chat information directly to Google LLC and Meta Platforms Inc. even before it was seen by Perplexity. Google and Meta were also named as defendants.
The lawsuit alleges that the surreptitious tracking was not disclosed to Perplexity’s users and operated without their consent.
A request to Perplexity for comment was promptly acknowledged by Jesse Dwyer, the company’s chief communications officer, who said, “We have not been served any lawsuit that matches this description so we are unable to verify its existence or claims.”
John Doe, the unidentified plaintiff, alleges that the tracking occurred even if the user chatted with Perplexity in “incognito mode,” a feature that Perplexity claims creates “anonymous threads” that “won’t save to [the user’s] history and expire after 24 hours.”
The complaint alleges that the tracking technology used by Meta and Google allows the companies to harvest the user’s email, Facebook ID, IP address, as well as information about the user’s device and browser. Once Google and Meta have that information, they can pair it with the user’s name and address, according to the plaintiff, and specifically identify the user.
But it isn’t simply the identifying information that raises concern. The plaintiff says that the technology allows Google and Meta to access the full text of chats with Perplexity — both the user’s prompts and the AI’s responses.
The complaint spends a lot of time describing the sensitivity of information that users frequently share with Perplexity, including tax, legal, financial, political, and health information. As an example, Doe — the unidentified plaintiff — used Perplexity to figure when he and his spouse could begin drawing Social Security, convert savings from a taxable brokerage account into a Roth IRA, and to obtain advice on possible investments in cannabis companies.
Doe says he “believed that these communications with Perplexity’s AI Machine were private and that Perplexity would not share his communications with third parties like Meta and Google.”
Doe’s lawyers are Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing PLLC, a boutique firm from Houston with roughly 60 lawyers that advertises itself as “first and foremost a trial firm.”
The firm’s Texas roots are perhaps evident in the long section of the complaint that discusses the value of the data Meta and Google collect. Quoting from a 2014 article in Wired, the complaint says that “data is the new oil of the digital economy,” and contends that “Meta has built its business on harvesting and refining that ‘digital oil.'”
Continuing with the oil analogy, it says that Meta transforms the data into “a monetizable commodity, just like an oil company acquires crude oil for the purpose of transforming it into gasoline.”
The complaint says that in return for embedding their trackers, Perplexity obtained comprehensive analytic information and marketing tools from Google and Meta.
Doe is asking for the court to order the company to stop the alleged tracking. The suit also seeks damages and suggests that at least Meta’s tracking technology is still being used by Perplexity.
Perplexity is based in San Francisco and while dwarfed by its neighboring AI developers — OpenAI and Anthropic — it is not a mom-and-pop shop. The complaint says Perplexity was valued at $20 billion in September 2025, when it raised $200 million in funding.
The complaint says that the user is encouraged to share confidential information by the friendly, even solicitous tone and manner of Perplexity’s chat function. It says the chat “is designed for interactive communications with users resembling human conversations.”
More broadly, the complaint cites studies of multiple AI platforms that have found that “many users specifically and intentionally turn to AI Machines for issues they are reluctant to discuss with other humans, including such things as relationship advice, companionship, and sexual or identity exploration.”
A search of recent litigation did not identify any other suits against Perplexity or other major AI developers based on the plaintiffs’ tracking allegations. However, litigation over undisclosed tracking technology in other contexts has exploded in California in recent years.
Many of the legal theories in those cases are based on California’s broad constitutional and statutory privacy guarantees, as well as its strong consumer protections. The 14 counts of Doe’s complaint include allegations of invasion of privacy, violations of the state’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as claims for deceit and unfair competition.
Mountain View-based Google and Menlo Park-based Meta are also named defendants and sued under many of the same theories.
The plaintiff requests the court to certify two classes. The first is a nationwide class of all users who chatted with Perplexity (and had their information sent to Meta or Google) between Dec. 7, 2022, and Feb. 4, 2026, excluding Perplexity subscribers with paid “Pro” or “Max” subscriptions. The second is a “subclass” with the same general parameters but made up only of California citizens.
The reason why paid subscribers are excluded from the classes is not explained in detail, but a footnote says that “those agreements are subject to a different of terms and conditions” and adds that Doe does not have a paid subscription and doesn’t seek to represent or bring claims on behalf of the paid subscribers.
The plaintiff’s lawyers did not respond to requests for further information.
This story was written by Joe Dworetzky for Bay City News Service.
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