A few months ago, the company gave its Perplexity Pro access to AIM, predominantly for research and analysis purposes. The results have been promising.
The biggest pain point for any kind of research is the source and authenticity of information. Unlike any of the available LLM that generate results, Perplexity substantiates the given information with the source link, and the veracity of the content is addressed, which AIM users found to be the biggest plus point.
“I actually liked it. The sources are quite reliable,” said a research associate at AIM.
With the option to select from a list of the latest AI models, including Claude 3 Opus, Mistral Large and GPT-4 Turbo, users can experiment with any of them. A range of features such as ‘discover’, ‘focus’ and ‘attach’ allows users to explore and cater search to their specific needs.
“Whenever I don’t understand a feature or anything else while browsing the internet, I just take a screenshot and ask Perplexity about it,” said a video journalist at AIM, who also uses the application to improve the workflow and check the grammar of his scripts.
Interestingly, we observed that Perplexity generated answers faster than ChatGPT.
Perplexity Pro Lacks Depth, Hallucination Persists
Perplexity Pro provided various features that worked extremely well for us; however, it was not perfect. When generating in-depth responses to a particular context, ChatGPT fared better than Perplexity Pro. The latter was unable to handle complex instructions.
In a rare few occurrences, the chatbot even generated incorrect information. When prompted again about the incorrect information, it generated the right one. Like every LLM, Perplexity Pro is also not free from hallucinations.
Perplexity Pro Responses
It was also noticed that the order of search results closely resembled Google Search results. This sparked conversation around how Perplexity is possibly a Google wrapper. However, we have not observed an exhaustive list of search results that proves the same.
Nothing like Perplexity AI
Despite its flaws, Perplexity has become the talk of the town. The AI-powered answer engine has been in a quest to establish itself as a Google alternative. In the process, the company is actively partnering with device-makers, especially smartphones.
The company recently partnered with Nothing, where the buyers of their latest smartphones get a free subscription of Perplexity Pro.
Not just smartphone makers but even operators have become strategic partners. The company recently announced its partnership with Korea’s largest telecommunications company, SK Telecoms, where 32M+ subscribers will get access to Perplexity Pro.
Perplexity also announced its pplx-online LLM APIs to power Rabbit R1, an AI-powered gadget that uses a large action model (LAM).
Last month, Perplexity partnered with Yelp to improve local searches and help users find information on local restaurants and businesses, a probable step to combat Google reviews.
Perplexity recently incorporated DataBricks’ latest open-source LLM DBRX, which is said to outperform GPT-4 and other powerful AI models like LLaMA and Mistral.
Source: X
Not just Databricks, Perplexity has been open to embracing and offering all kinds of closed-source models through APIs and answer engines, be it the latest Claude 3 Opus, Mistral Large, or Google Gemma. Perplexity is quick at its game.
Further, Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO and co-founder, recently announced that Copy AI, which is launching a GTM platform, is collaborating with Perplexity AI. “They chose to use our APIs for this, and we’re also providing six months of Perplexity Pro for free to current Copy AI subscribers,” he said.
Even NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang had earlier mentioned that he uses Perplexity, a company they have invested in, ‘almost everyday’.
The Future of Search?
The testimonials of big tech leaders such as Huang and Jeff Bezos may sound inflated considering they have invested in the AI company, but going by the growing number of Perplexity users, the company is surely capturing a wide audience.
The company has over 10 million monthly users.
Further, they are even offering the model in various languages, such as Korean, German, French and Spanish.
While they aim to compete with Google and Sundar Pichai, whom Srinivas admires, things are looking good for Perplexity AI and Aravind Bhai. AIM loves Perplexity and Google, equally.
Compare Perplexity AI Vs ChatGPT Vs Bing Chat
| Comparison | Perplexity AI | ChatGPT | Bing Chat |
| Accuracy | up-to-date information | May not offer current data | Real-time internet access |
| Reliability | Provides citations | Good for conversational | Comprehensive responses |
| User Experience | Ideal for in-depth research | Engaging and natural user experience | Flexible and wide application coverage |
| Best Use Case | Factual accuracy | Generating creative content | Multimodal inputs |
