Oct 24 (Reuters) - Perplexity said on Thursday the

allegations of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed by Dow

Jones and the New York Post were misleading, and vowed to defend

itself.

The media conglomerate News Corp ( NWSA )-owned publishers sued

California-based Perplexity on Monday, claiming that the startup

engages in a "massive amount of illegal copying" of their

copyrighted work.

The lawsuit says 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.

Perplexity denied this in a blog post on Thursday, saying

that it responded to the letter the very same day and "instead

of continuing the dialogue, they filed this lawsuit."

Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity's CEO, was "surprised" by the

lawsuit from media baron Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones and the New

York Post against the search startup, he said at the WSJ Tech

Live conference on Wednesday.

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a bitter ongoing battle

between publishers and tech companies over unauthorized use of

copyrighted content to build and operate their AI systems.

The AI company is among the leading startups attempting to

uproot the search engine market dominated by Alphabet's

Google. It assembles information from webpages it

deems to be authoritative, then provides a summary directly

within Perplexity's own tool.