Perplexity: the clearest early leader in AI consumer apps

There’s one AI tool virtually everybody would benefit from: the would-be Google-search killer, Perplexity, available at Perplexity.ai. Perplexity provides concise, AI-generated summaries of information rather than just a list of links, saving time and effort in finding relevant information. In particular, I find Perplexity's streamlined interface prevents me from getting bogged down in distracting links that are inevitable when browsing the web directly (ie clickbait).

Not only can Perplexity almost entirely replace Google searches, it is also better, in my view, than ChatGPT for most any purpose. (In fact, Perplexity uses the same Large Language Models that power regular AI chatbots under the hood, enhanced with additional web-browsing capabilities.) ChatGPT isn’t primarily about web search (though parent company OpenAI is working on its own solution, SearchGPT). Perplexity backs up its answers with citations that link to the original source material on the web. So you save time, but you don’t lose anything if you actually enjoy going over links with a fine-tooth comb. And Perplexity can also answer any follow-up questions you have, with your context in mind.

You can use Perplexity the same way as you would use Google search. The number one use case where I find it beats Google hands-down is when you’re comparison shopping. Like finding the best ergonomic chair or the best dishwasher. Whenever you enter a query like that in Google, you will be confronted with ads and a bunch of links, (as you no doubt know). Google has an incentive for you to spend time crawling websites (to see more of its ads). Perplexity, on the other hand, is an “answer engine”.

Perplexity is mostly free to use, you can toggle the “Pro” button to enable more in-depth search for complex queries (you get five free Pro queries every 4 hours). And if you want more features and more Pro searches, you can subscribe to Perplexity Pro for US$20 per month. Perplexity will soon have ads. They have also launched a revenue-sharing program with publishers, so a nascent business model is emerging.

The company is backed by luminaries like Jeff Bezos, Shopify founder Tobi Lütke and many others. Hedge fund legend Stanley Druckenmiller and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang are big fans. Perplexity is focused on solving a well-defined problem and it doesn’t have close competitors. It’s piggybacking on the people who are caught up in the Large Language Model (LLM) nuclear arms race. A common criticism of Perplexity’s business model is that it’s a mere “wrapper” around LLMs (or a repackager of LLMs). I think that’s the genius of the business model (ie not getting dragged in the heavy-lifting of building LLMs). If I had to invest in any AI venture, Perplexity would be my top choice. And as far as consumers are concerned, this "wrapper" model is to our benefit, you will always have access to the best LLMs without worrying who’s in the lead this month.

Despite its focus on web search and finding answers, you can still give Perplexity similar tasks as you would to other AI chatbots (like writing a stern legal letter or a poem about your dog). I find it especially interesting that Perplexity is happy to help me with coding tasks (which has nothing to do with web search). That tells me Perplexity wants to be a broad “answer engine”. It probably has Google-sized ambitions, long-term. Another obvious use case for Perplexity is for anyone writing anything that requires research.

Perplexity has an app for both iPhones and Androids. There are no desktop apps, but you could switch your browser to Arc, for which Perplexity is the default search engine. ChatGPT