Perplexity AI: A New Friend of Internet Searching

Ever find yourself lost in a series of search engine results and open tabs, struggling to find a specific answer? You receive one bit of information on one site and a slightly different angle on another search result, but there still is no consensus. We rely on search engines on a daily basis to provide us with helpful and accurate information, yet when we get large swaths of results, we are left scratching our heads in confusion. We are happy to share that Perplexity may be the answer. 

Designed to provide a more efficient and intelligent way to search and sift through information, Perplexity was created to go beyond conventional search engines, offering direct, well-sourced answers backed by real-time data. Perplexity describes itself as the AI-powered search assistant. Founded in 2022 by a team of AI researchers and engineers (they each had background experience at OpenAI, DeepMind, Quora, and Meta), this Silicon Valley based company’s mission is to build the world’s best conversational answer engine (Perplexity Team, 2024). A competitor to the likes of Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT, Perplexity assists in answering all the questions we normally would have typed into when “asking the internet.” Even in its main functionality, the front page of its website asks the users, “What do you want to know?” So simple yet so smart. Perplexity already assumes we have questions, and it takes the bold step of making us comfortable relying on it for the answers.        

Since 2022, Perplexity has experienced significant growth, with over 10 million active users. Financial Times describes Perplexity’s popularity as taking on the likes of Google, amassing nearly $3 billion in value in those last years. Perplexity and its team continue to evolve, consistently revolutionizing how people interact with information. Even as we type up this blog, Perplexity has notified me that it has updated its search engine through the use of a time symbol, and its most recent update reading “now”:    

Beyond its conversational user-friendliness as a high-powered search engine, Perplexity also stresses the importance of information retrieval, research, and content summarization in real time. With each search submission, Perplexity provides data resources at the top, numbered and/or bulleted key highlights, and numerous citations. Even when searching “What are the primary functions of Perplexity AI?”, we see this resourceful output:

Within the search, Perplexity offers research links and websites, images and presentations, and summarized information with citations. The work of this platform is overall a comprehensive information discovery and processing tool, enhancing our research process as a knowledgeable assistant. Join us in our second blog to learn more about how Perplexity works!   

References

Financial Times. (2024, February 18). Perplexity’s popularity surges as AI search start-up takes on Google. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/87af3340-2611-4650-9ae3-036927e9f65c 

Perplexity Team. (2024, October 1). Getting started with Perplexity. Perplexity. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/getting-started-with-perplexity