Aravind Srinivas said he told Dow Jones and the New York Post in June that the AI company was open to discussions about using their content.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas was "surprised" by a 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 Wall Street Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, and the New York Post are suing AI-powered search startup Perplexity for using their content to train its large language models. Both News Corp. publications are accusing Perplexity of copyright infringement for using their articles to generate answers to people's queries,

News Corp is pursuing legal action against Perplexity AI, accusing the startup of illegally copying content from its outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, to train its AI models and generate revenue at the expense of journalists and publishers.