17 May 2024

Perplexity AI: has Google finally met its match?

CHAS NEWKEY-BURDEN

Starting a search business has long "been a nearly impossible hill to climb", said industry news site Digiday, because new contenders are "invariably up against" the "Mt. Everest" of Google. But a start-up called Perplexity AI is aiming to reach that peak by using artificial intelligence to offer answers to questions rather than simply links.

What is the new product?

Recently valued at $1 billion, Perplexity AI is the creation of Aravind Srinivas. After interning at OpenAI and Google's DeepMind, both of which became leaders in generative artificial intelligence, Srinivas co-founded his challenger tool, which provides fast, Wikipedia-like responses to search queries. So it's "bye bye" to the "10 blue links" of Google, said The Verge, and "hello direct answers to all my weird questions about the world".

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