Everything You Need to Know about AI-Powered Search Engine "Perplexity"

Perplexity is a new AI-powered search engine that was founded in 2022 by a former OpenAI employee. It aims to provide a straightforward and efficient search experience without the influence of advertising-driven models. Perplexity has gained over 10 million monthly active users in roughly two years and is valued at $520 million. It offers an ads-free experience and aims to give users the most exact answers to their queries.

Perplexity differs from search engines like Google and Bing by offering an ads-free experience, aiming to cut through the clutter of sponsored content and low-quality websites. It focuses on providing the most exact answers to user queries without inundating them with competitor ads. Perplexity also allows for follow-up questions based on initial search results, which is a feature that helps users get to the heart of their query more efficiently.

Perplexity offers several features including:

• Flagging inaccuracies: It helps users identify incorrect information.
• Narrowing down searches: Users can specify sources like Reddit, YouTube, and Yelp for their queries.
• Customizing AI profiles: This allows adjustment of language, output format, and tone.

Additionally, Perplexity provides a free version powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5, while its pro version includes more powerful options with GPT-4, Claude 2, and Mistral's Le Large models, along with Perplexity's own model. It also features a conversational chatbot that learns from previous interactions and understands context.

To use Perplexity for specific searches, you can simply prompt it with a query, such as asking for a banana bread recipe or market trends in the real estate sector. Perplexity can also serve as an assistant by summarizing documents, generating copy, and analyzing data. It provides a straightforward list of results with sources and descriptions, and allows users to ask follow-up questions for more detailed information.

The advantages of using Perplexity over Google for certain queries include:

• Simplicity: Perplexity offers straightforward answers without overwhelming users with too many options.
• No ads: It provides an ad-free experience, so users don't have to sift through sponsored content.
• Quality of information: Perplexity focuses on giving the most exact answers and allows for follow-up questions to dive deeper into the topic.
• Real-time synthesis: It gathers real-time information and synthesizes it into digestible content with source links and related media.

For users who prefer a more direct and less cluttered search experience, Perplexity may be more suitable than Google.