“It’s surfacing content from the web, summarizing it in a manner that the user can digest,” he said, “and then provides all this information — exactly how journalists do their job, or academics do their job, or students.”

In a recent blog post responding to the Dow Jones lawsuit, Perplexity argued that publishers wished its technology “didn’t exist” and would prefer “publicly reported facts are owned by corporations.” But the post failed to address whether Perplexity allegedly regurgitates content at a massive scale, as some publishers claim — and then competes with those publishers for the same audience.