Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is a free AI-powered answer engine that integrates with advanced AI models and the results of online search, offering real-time, evidence-backed answers.

As is known to all, chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude AI are trained using older data and can’t reach the Internet. To get the latest data when using advanced AI models, perplexity.ai comes out by combining them together.

What is Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is a free AI-powered answer engine that integrates with the results of online search. Perplexity gets the latest information from multiple trustworthy sources and feeds it to several AI models, providing users more accurate and comprehensive answers.  

The platform is backed by a team of experts in AI and machine learning, with significant investments fueling its continuous development.

What does Perplexity AI do

It offers real-time, evidence-backed answers and helps users conduct in-depth research on any topic efficiently. The tool integrates various language models, including the latest from OpenAI and Anthropic, to provide precise and contextually relevant responses.

Perplexity Pricing

Perplexity.ai offers a free version with basic features including:
1.Unlimited Quick searches
2.5 Pro Searches per day
3.Standard Perplexity AI Model optimized for speed and quality
4.Create a profile to personalize your answers

Perplexity AI pricing

The Pro plan charges $20/month, which includes:
1.Unlimited Quick searches
2.300+ Pro searches per day
3.Select your preferred AI Model. Choose from GPT-4o, Claude-3, Sonar Large (LLama 3.1), and more
4.Upload and analyze unlimited files
5.Visualize answers using Playground AI, DALL-E, SDXL, and more
6.Get $5/month in API credits

Product History

Perplexity.ai was established in August 2022 by a group of engineers with deep expertise in AI and machine learning. The founding team includes Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski.  Aravind Srinivas, the CEO, previously worked as an AI researcher at OpenAI. Denis Yarats, the CTO, was an AI research scientist at Meta. Johnny Ho, the Chief Strategy Officer, has experience as an engineer at Quora and as a quantitative trader on Wall Street. Andy Konwinski was part of the founding team at Databricks.

The company quickly gained momentum, securing $165 million in funding by 2024 from prominent investors like Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Databricks, Bessemer Venture Partners, Susan Wojcicki, Jeff Dean, Yann LeCun, Andrej Karpathy, Nat Friedman, and Garry Tan. By mid-2024, Perplexity.ai had achieved a valuation of $3 billion.

Perplexity.ai's flagship product is a conversational search engine that uses natural language processing to deliver accurate, real-time answers to user queries. The platform operates on a freemium model, offering basic search functionalities for free and advanced features through its Pro plan. The Pro plan includes access to multiple language models such as GPT-4, Claude 3.5, Mistral Large, Llama 3, and an experimental Perplexity model.

By the first quarter of 2024, Perplexity.ai had reached 15 million monthly users. The platform continues to innovate, introducing new features like the "Pages" feature in May 2024, which allows users to create customizable web pages based on user prompts.

Pros Cons
  • ✔️ Comprehensive, real-time information from multiple sources and search engines.
  • ✔️ Advanced features like AI image generation and multilingual support.
  • ✔️ Able to upload and analyze unlimited files.
  • ❌ Information accuracy depends on the sources it pulls from.
  • ❌ Some sources it uses are nothing to do with the search intent users want.

The product (Perplexity AI) starts at 20 USD.