Perplexity responds to copyright infringement lawsuit, says it is ‘disappointed and surprised’

Perplexity, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup is facing a lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement. Filed by Dow Jones and the New York Post, the lawsuit claims that the startup engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their copyrighted work. It alleges that Perplexity did not respond to a letter sent by the two news publishers in July, notifying it of the legal issues raised by its unauthorized use of copyrighted works, and offering to discuss a potential licensing deal.

In a blog post, the company said that it is both “disappointed and surprised” by the lawsuit. It said that the facts alleged in the complaint are misleading at best. “They are disingenuous in their description of what happened even in the specific cited instances, as well as in their broader depiction of what Perplexity is for (spoiler alert: it’s not for reprising the full text of articles that can be more directly and efficiently obtained elsewhere). And the suggestion that we never responded to outreach from News Corp. is simply false: they reached out; we responded the very same day; instead of continuing the dialogue, they filed this lawsuit.”
“Second, we have learned in the short time since this lawsuit was filed, a disturbing trend in these types of cases: The companies that are suing make all kinds of salacious allegations in their complaints about all kinds of seemingly bad things they were able to coax the AI tools to do—and then, when pressed in the litigation for details of things like how they achieved such obviously unrepresentative results, they immediately disavow the very examples they put in the public record, and swear they won’t actually use them in the case. We presume that is what will happen here. And that will tell you everything you need to know about the strength of their case,” it added.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, speaking at WSJ Tech Live conference said that he was "surprised" by the lawsuit.