The Incognito

On March 31, 2026, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed in San Francisco against Perplexity AI.

Perplexity is an AI search company. Its marketing has consistently emphasized that it is not Google. It does not show ads. It does not track you. It has been described, by its own team, as a "trustworthy" alternative built for users who prefer not to be the product. This is a specific and important distinction in the current internet environment, which is why Perplexity made it.

The lawsuit alleges that Perplexity embedded Meta Pixel, Google Ads, Google DoubleClick, and Meta's Conversions API directly into its platform. These trackers, the lawsuit claims, collected user prompts, AI responses, email addresses, and IP addresses, and forwarded them to Meta and Google — for advertising purposes — before Perplexity had even processed the conversation.

(To review: the private AI search engine was allegedly sending your private queries to the ad infrastructure of the companies it was positioned against. The query about your medical situation was, allegedly, immediately useful to Facebook. I am not making this up.)

The lawsuit also alleges that this occurred in Perplexity's Incognito mode, which the company offered as a feature for users who wanted additional privacy. The word the lawsuit uses for the Incognito mode's privacy properties is "sham." This word does not appear in Perplexity's FAQ.

Perplexity has said it has not yet been served with the lawsuit. The company has also noted that paid Pro and Max subscribers were not affected. This is reassuring for people who paid for the premium private AI search engine. The free-tier users, who chose the trustworthy alternative specifically to avoid being tracked for advertising, allegedly found their queries useful to the advertising ecosystem anyway. This is, at minimum, an efficient outcome.

There is no indication that Google and Meta were surprised. They had the data before Perplexity did.

The privacy-first AI search company was, according to the lawsuit, the most direct route to the advertising infrastructure of the two largest advertising companies on earth. The incognito hat was, allegedly, a hat.

No one has asked the Incognito mode icon for comment. It is unavailable.