What Is Perplexity AI? Perplexity vs. ChatGPT Search – How Things Have Changed

What Is Perplexity AI?

Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search tool and chatbot that changes the way people search and access information online. Unlike traditional search engines that simply provide a list of links, Perplexity uses advanced language understanding to deliver conversational, context-aware direct answers tailored to each user’s question.

Perplexity AI’s main goal is to make finding information easier and more accurate. It performs live web searches, pulling information from various sources like academic journals, news sites, and social media to give users well-rounded, up-to-date responses to their questions.

With features like source citations, personalized answers, and a conversational format, Perplexity AI simplifies the search process and lets users easily check the reliability of the information they receive. By retrieving information directly from the web, Perplexity also bypasses the limitation of static knowledge cutoff dates, ensuring users get the most current information available.

All these features make it a valuable tool for researchers, students, professionals, and anyone looking for trusted, straightforward answers in today’s information-heavy world.

Key Features of Perplexity AI And How It Stands Out

Perplexity AI stands out by offering a range of unique features that make it more than just a typical AI chatbot or search tool. Built to deliver fast, accurate, and contextually relevant answers, Perplexity goes beyond traditional search engines and AI chatbots by providing real-time information from the web, transparent citations, and personalized, interactive responses. These key features include:

1. Real-Time Information Retrieval

Perplexity AI’s most touted feature is its ability to gather live data directly from the web. Unlike many AI chatbots and tools that rely on pre-existing knowledge up to a certain cutoff date, Perplexity actively searches the internet to provide users with the latest information available. This real-time data retrieval allows Perplexity to answer questions that involve current events, recent research, or trending topics.

For example, if you asked other AI chatbots, “What are today’s stock market trends?” or “What are the latest COVID-19 statistics?” these chatbots might respond based on outdated information in their knowledge base. However, with Perplexity AI, you can be confident that its responses are not only accurate but also relevant to the latest developments.

This sets it apart as a powerful tool for quick and reliable information gathering.

2. Source Citations and Transparency

For every response it generates, Perplexity includes citations from its information sources. This allows users who need to trust the information they’re getting to verify the credibility and accuracy of the information they receive. This level of transparency is essential in fields like research, academic work, and professional decision-making, where accuracy is critical.

On top of that, by providing clear links to original sources, Perplexity encourages users to explore the context of each answer more deeply. This will help them gain a stronger understanding and confidence in the information provided.

3. Diverse Source Integration

One of Perplexity AI’s standout features is its ability to collect information from a wide range of sources—a practice known as “diverse source integration”. This is in contrast with how most AI chatbots work, as they rely on knowledge from a fixed set of training data that includes a broad but static mix of internet text and documents.

Perplexity gathers data from diverse sources including academic journals, news articles, online forums, and even social media, ensuring that its responses are not only up-to-date but also enriched by insights from diverse perspectives.

This variety allows Perplexity to deliver answers that include both reputable, research-backed insights and more immediate, community-driven perspectives. For users seeking a well-rounded answer—whether they’re looking for scientific studies, current news events, or popular discussions—this diverse source integration helps to make sure that responses are both well-informed and relevant.

4. Personalized Responses

Perplexity AI is designed to provide responses that feel tailored to each user’s specific needs. By interpreting the context of the initial question and considering any follow-up inquiries, Perplexity adjusts its answers to be more relevant and specific to what the user is looking for. For instance, if a user starts by asking about climate change impacts and then follows up with a question about renewable energy solutions, Perplexity can seamlessly connect these topics in its responses.

While the personalization aspect is not unique to Perplexity—many AI chatbots also adapt based on user input—it’s still worth highlighting as a key feature. Perplexity’s ability to respond dynamically ensures that users can dig deeper into topics, explore various angles, and receive answers that closely match their inquiries. This fosters a more interactive and engaging search experience. 

5. Multimodal Capabilities

Perplexity AI has evolved to include multimodal capabilities since December 2022, allowing it to handle various forms of media in user queries, such as images, PDFs, CSV files, and text documents. This feature allows users to find answers to complex questions that may need more context than plain text alone.

By integrating multiple content types into the conversation, Perplexity can better understand and respond to inquiries that involve visual information, detailed documents, or specific excerpts. For example, a user researching a scientific topic could upload a PDF of a study. This way, Perplexity can refer directly to the document when providing insights.

Multimodal support is particularly beneficial for professionals, researchers, and students who often rely on specific documents or visuals in their work. As this AI tool continues to evolve, it may expand its features to include even more types of media and interactive functionalities.

6. Focus Feature

Perplexity AI includes a unique “Focus Feature” that allows users to specify particular sources for their searches, such as Reddit, academic journals, news sites, or other specialized databases. This capability provides users with more control over the type of information they receive, enabling them to fine-tune their queries based on their specific needs or preferred sources.

For example, a user interested in public opinions on a topic could focus their search on Reddit to find discussions and community insights, while a researcher might prefer academic journals for peer-reviewed studies. The available focus options include:

• Web: A comprehensive search across the entire internet.
• Academic: Specializes in scholarly articles and publications.
• Math: Designed to handle math-related queries.
• Writing: Assists in content creation tasks.
• Video: Searches for relevant videos with timestamps.
• Social: Targets community discussions and opinions.

The Focus Feature is especially helpful for professionals, students, and researchers who need targeted answers from credible sources. By allowing users to zero in on specific information types, Perplexity AI becomes an even more versatile tool for diverse research and information-gathering needs.

Example Use Cases of Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI’s unique features make it a versatile tool across a variety of fields, providing reliable, up-to-date information that adapts to specific needs. Among some practical use cases where Perplexity shines are:

1. Academic Research for Students, Educators, and Researchers

With its real-time web search and Focus Feature, Perplexity AI is a valuable asset for students, educators, and researchers. It can pull information from academic journals, scientific studies, and reputable sources, to offer credible and current insights for research papers or projects. Its source citations and diverse content integration help to ensure that users have a strong foundation for fact-checking and exploring topics in depth.

2. Professional Decision-Making

Professionals across industries can rely on Perplexity AI to provide trustworthy and source-backed information for business or project decisions. Perplexity can gather data from a broad spectrum of sources and deliver precise answers to help professionals make data-driven decisions, no matter whether it is for researching market trends, technical insights, or regulatory updates.

3. Exploring Public Opinion and Social Trends

Set Perplexity’s Focus Feature to ‘Social,’ and it will primarily target platforms like Reddit and other social media sources. This makes it ideal for anyone studying public sentiment or social trends. Marketers, sociologists, and public relations teams can use Perplexity to gather community perspectives, popular opinions, and current trends that can help shape campaigns, products, or reports.

4. Media and Content Creation

Journalists, writers, and content creators can use Perplexity AI to quickly research topics, find credible sources, and gather recent news events or trends. The platform’s citation feature is especially helpful for sourcing and fact-checking, which can be critical when producing content that demands accuracy and credibility.

5. Other Applications

Perplexity AI offers access to a wealth of real-time information in fields such as health, science, law, and finance, pulling from credible sources like medical journals, government publications, and financial news. However, in these critical areas, it’s especially important for users to perform their own due diligence and verify the accuracy of the information provided.

ChatGPT Search – Is ChatGPT Closing The Gap?

This discussion wouldn’t be complete without comparing Perplexity with ChatGPT, a pioneer in AI tools today—especially as the gap between these two competitors has narrowed with the introduction of ChatGPT Search.

For a long time, ChatGPT had a key limitation: it was restricted by its knowledge cutoff date and could only provide information up to its last training update. This meant it wasn’t equipped to answer questions about recent events or the latest research, which posed a problem for users needing current data and often forced them to rely on traditional search engines or other AI tools for up-to-date information.

To address this issue, OpenAI introduced a web browsing capability in mid-2023 and later extended it as the “ChatGPT Search” feature. This update allows ChatGPT to access real-time information from the web, aiming to bridge the gap in delivering current answers. With this addition, ChatGPT is positioned to potentially catch up with AI tools like Perplexity, which have offered live web searches from the start.

But how close does it really come to bridging that gap? Let’s take a closer look.

What Perplexity and ChatGPT Search Have in Common

ChatGPT Search and Perplexity AI share several core features. One obvious similarity is their ability to retrieve real-time information from the web, allowing both to provide up-to-date answers on current events, statistics, and other timely topics—an advantage we’ve discussed throughout this post.

Additionally, both tools use a conversational interface, and both are capable of interpreting queries naturally and handling follow-up questions to refine responses. This interactive approach makes them feel intuitive and engaging.

Both Perplexity and ChatGPT Search are versatile tools and can be applied to a wide range of use cases, from research and general inquiries to professional and creative tasks. They are both valuable tools for a broad range of audiences.

The Real Question Is: How Different Are They?

Here’s a brief comparison of the main differences between Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Search:

1. Source Transparency: Perplexity provides citations for each response, letting users directly verify information through the original source. ChatGPT Search, on the other hand, offers links only to some sources but doesn’t provide structured citations for every answer.

2. Focused Source Selection: Perplexity’s Focus Feature allows users to specify sources like Web, Academic, or Social. This gives them more control over search results. ChatGPT Search currently lacks this capability, and is offering general search results instead.

3. Diverse Source Integration: Perplexity AI draws from a variety of sources, including academic journals, news articles, social media, and forums, providing users with comprehensive answers from multiple perspectives. ChatGPT Search sources information from a broader set of general web sources but doesn’t specifically emphasize diverse source types in its responses.

4. Multimodal Capabilities: Perplexity AI can process and respond to various types of inputs, including text and images, similar to the capabilities of ChatGPT. However, Perplexity AI has the upper hand in that it supports a broader range of file types for uploads, including text files, PDFs, CSVs, Excel files (XLSX), and Word documents (DOCX). This feature allows users to interact with and analyze document-based content more effectively than what is currently available in ChatGPT.

5. Target Audience: Perplexity is ideal for researchers, students, and professionals who need verifiable, source-backed information. In contrast, ChatGPT Search is well-suited for a broader audience, including general users, creatives, and professionals who benefit from quick, general information and creative assistance.

Limitations of Perplexity AI

While Perplexity AI is a powerful tool for research and information retrieval, it has some limitations users should be mindful of. A primary concern is “hallucination”—a common issue among AI tools—where the AI generates answers that sound credible but are actually incorrect or nonsensical. This can lead to misinformation if users unknowingly trust these inaccurate responses.

Concerns about Perplexity’s potential plagiarism and unethical web scraping practices have also been raised by multiple news outlets, including Wired and Forbes. The tool has been criticized for at times mirroring content from established sources too closely, without proper attribution.

In addition, although Perplexity has largely reduced the issue of outdated information, there can still be a delay in real-time updates. While Perplexity AI relies on web crawling to deliver current information, the latest data may not always be incorporated immediately. This can be a drawback for users needing the most recent updates on rapidly changing topics like breaking news or market trends.

Lastly, Perplexity AI can only retain context over a certain length and struggles with extended conversations due to its context window size. Unlike some advanced AI models, it is designed for quick factual responses, and might be less suited for ongoing interactions that require a deep understanding of previous exchanges. Users needing detailed problem-solving or nuanced discussions may find this limitation challenging for in-depth inquiries.

Conclusion

Perplexity AI stands out as a powerful combination of AI and search engine, designed to deliver real-time information with source transparency and focused source selection. Its ability to pull from diverse sources and provide citation-backed answers makes it especially valuable for researchers, professionals, and students who need reliable, up-to-date information.

As for the market leader, ChatGPT, OpenAI is actively addressing its previous limitation of a fixed knowledge cutoff date with the introduction of ChatGPT Search. This update brings ChatGPT closer to AI tools that have offered real-time information retrieval from the start, such as Perplexity.

Now, Perplexity and ChatGPT Search share several core functions for retrieving information directly from the web. However, each tool remains uniquely suited to different audiences. As both continue to evolve, it will be interesting to see how they refine their capabilities to meet the diverse needs of their users.