Perplexity AI Faces Scrutiny for Dodging Anti-Scraping Measures

✨TodayOnAI’s Daily Drop

• Perplexity AI Faces Scrutiny for Dodging Anti-Scraping Measures

• Google’s AI Bug Hunter Uncovers 20 Security Flaws in Open Source Software

• ChatGPT Nears 700M Weekly Users as Engagement Surges

• 💬 Let’s Fix This Prompt

• 🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

OPENAI

Perplexity AI Faces Scrutiny for Dodging Anti-Scraping Measures

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Cloudflare has accused AI startup Perplexity of evading web-scraping restrictions by masking its identity and ignoring explicit blocks, reigniting tensions between AI firms and internet infrastructure providers over unauthorized data use.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Cloudflare claims Perplexity circumvented robots.txt files and identity checks to scrape data from websites that explicitly opted out.

• Perplexity allegedly disguised its bots using fake user-agent strings (e.g., mimicking Google Chrome) and rotated autonomous system numbers (ASNs) to avoid detection.

• The activity spanned millions of daily requests across tens of thousands of domains, according to Cloudflare's analysis using ML and network signals.

• Perplexity denies the allegations, calling Cloudflare’s blog post a “sales pitch” and disowning the bot identified in the report.

• Cloudflare has de-listed Perplexity’s bots from its verified registry and is expanding its anti-scraping tools following recent publisher backlash.

💡 Why This Stands Out: The clash underscores growing friction between AI companies hungry for training data and the infrastructure players and publishers trying to reclaim control over their content. As major platforms weaponize tools to detect and block unauthorized crawlers, the ethical and technical boundaries of AI data collection are being tested. Will regulation arrive before the web’s foundational trust model erodes further?

Google

Google’s AI Bug Hunter Uncovers 20 Security Flaws in Open Source Software

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Google’s AI-powered vulnerability researcher, Big Sleep, has identified 20 security flaws in widely used open source software—marking a major milestone in automated bug discovery. Developed by DeepMind and Project Zero, the tool found and reproduced the vulnerabilities independently, signaling a new era of LLM-driven cybersecurity.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Big Sleep discovered 20 vulnerabilities in open-source tools like FFmpeg and ImageMagick.

• While a human reviewed reports before submission, the AI independently found and reproduced each flaw.

• The project is a collaboration between DeepMind and Google’s Project Zero.

• Google withheld technical details until patches are released, following standard disclosure practice.

• Other AI-based bug hunters like RunSybil and XBOW are also gaining traction, though human validation remains essential.

💡 Why This Stands Out: This marks one of the clearest examples yet of LLMs achieving functional autonomy in high-stakes security work. While human oversight remains critical, the fact that Big Sleep can surface actionable flaws at scale hints at a future where AI augments—if not leads—the frontline of software defense. As AI’s role in cybersecurity grows, will developer workflows need to evolve just as quickly?

OPENAI

ChatGPT Nears 700M Weekly Users as Engagement Surges

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: ChatGPT is set to surpass 700 million weekly active users, marking a sharp rise from 500 million just four months ago. The surge highlights both the platform’s mainstream momentum and OpenAI’s push to broaden AI accessibility and utility.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• ChatGPT has quadrupled its user base year-over-year, according to OpenAI VP Nick Turley.

• Growth accelerated after March’s rollout of enhanced image-generation powered by GPT-4.

• Over 700 million images were created within days of launch, with 130M+ users participating.

• ChatGPT now has 5 million paying business users, up from 3 million in June.

• Users engage with the app for 16 minutes daily on average, across more than 12 days a month—ranking just behind Google and X, per Sensor Tower.

💡 Why This Stands Out: ChatGPT’s rapid growth underscores its evolution from a novelty chatbot to a daily-use platform across consumer and enterprise contexts. Its expanding capabilities—especially in multimodal AI—are driving deeper user engagement. As it continues to scale, the question becomes: how will OpenAI balance mass adoption with trust, utility, and differentiation in an increasingly crowded market?

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🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

• 🍋LemonSqueezy (Finance Tool): Handles the tax compliance burden so you can focus on more revenue with less headache.

• 💻ZipWP (Web Design Tool): Creates stunning websites in seconds.

• ⚙️DupDub (Content Tool): An all-in-one content creation platform that allows you to craft your content effortlessly and streamline your workflow.