WHAT IT IS
Perplexity is a question-answering search product Perplexity AI released in December 2022: for each question it retrieves web pages in real time and synthesizes an answer with cited sources. It folds retrieval, reading and answering into a single interaction, and users can follow the citations to check each point. Perplexity is offered on the web and on mobile, and also provides an API for developers.
Why it matters
It turned “search first, then answer, with a citation for each point” into an alternative everyday search entry point, making cited answers a product category of their own.
Key specs
- Form
- Web and mobile apps
- Citations
- Answers carry source links that can be checked one by one
- Modality
- Text in; text out
Capabilities
Related concepts
Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Rather than cramming knowledge into parameters, leave it outside and look it up on demand — an open-book exam instead of a closed-book one
Prompting & Alignment
Making a model helpful, honest and harmless is harder than simply making it bigger
Inference Optimization & Serving
Training happens once; inference happens a billion times a day — and serving is torn between fast first tokens and high throughput, which usually pull against each other
Comparable products
ChatGPT
2022The chat window that put a large language model in everyone’s hands
Gemini
2024One chat entry point that gathers search, office apps and a multimodal model
Microsoft Copilot
2023Conversational AI woven into the operating system and office apps
NotebookLM
2023Answers only from the sources you give it, with citations