What is Perplexity AI and why is it stirring controversy?

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups are making waves, with Perplexity AI becoming the latest to hit the headlines. 

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine and chatbot that assembles information from webpages that it deems trustworthy and then provides a summary with its own tool.

It is one of the start-ups that is trying to open up the Google-dominated search engine market. The company says its mission is to “democratise access to knowledge” by making it easier for anyone to learn and explore new topics.

The company currently receives about 15 million queries a day, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Euronews Next looks at how to use it and why it’s the sudden object of interest and controversy. 

How does it work?

Perplexity uses multiple large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI and Meta’s Llama, to generate summaries from your search. 

But what makes it different from the likes of Google?

Traditional search engines use pre-indexed data. But Perplexity does real-time searches, which the company said makes it effective for topics that evolve quickly, such as news.

Rather than providing a list of links like other search engines, Perplexity says it gives you answers in “clear, everyday language”.

It also shows links to the sources that have been used in the answers so that you know where the information is coming from.

How did it start?

Perplexity was founded in 2022 by Andy Konwinski, Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho, who met while working at Google AI.

The company is based in the San Francisco Bay Area in the US and is funded by several venture capital firms. It is also backed by Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.  

Why the sudden interest?

The company is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million (€463 million) at an $8 billion (€7.4 billion) valuation, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal this week. This would double the company’s valuation.