Intro
Perplexity AI got its name known because of the recent funding of 73.6 million made by big tech companies like NVIDIA and Bezos Expeditions, etc, on 4 Jan 2024.
At first glance, it looks just like yet another chatbot.
What does it do differently from other chatbots that it could receive such funding?
Let’s take a look.
What does Perplexity AI aim to do?
Replacing Google.
“Google is going to be viewed as something that’s legacy and old,” said Perplexity’s founder Aravind Srinivas to Reuters last week. “If you can directly answer somebody’s question, nobody needs those 10 blue links.” – from GIZMODO
That sounds ambitious, but do they deliver? The following is my experience so far.
What does Perplexity AI do?
It is essentially an AI chatbot. They offer a web app and a mobile app.
You ask it a question, it gives you back an answer.
It can also find the result on the web like Bing AI or paid OpenAI ChatGPT.
Is Perplexity AI free?
Yes, for the most part.
Like other ChatGPT provider, they provide the common chatbot feature with web search results. However, image recognition, image generation, co-pilot, etc – These features require a Pro plan.
Perplexity AI VS ChatGPT
What’s the difference?
Not much really, I don’t know, I just don’t see the point of it. Here’s why.
Core ideas and features
They wrapped the app with the idea of “question & answer”. They claimed that it is better and could replace Google’s search engine.
Realistically, it isn’t any different to any other ChatGPT. You are still asking it a question, it gives you an answer, and it works exactly the same.
It makes no difference if you insert a hint text saying this is a “Question” you are asking, and here is the “Answer” for you, it’s a bit silly.
However, they do have a feature called “Collection”, where you can save your chats into. Yet I hardly find it useful.
How does the price compare to other ChatGPT
Not attractive.
The Perplexity AI Pro plan starts at USD 20 monthly. Then, you can generate images and use co-pilot (mostly coding help) on Perplexity.
Though, why don’t I just get the Co-pilot in GitHub directly if I want that? It’s integrated so nicely for that. AND it’s only USD 10.
Apart from the fact that GitHub offers cheaper Co-pilot for half the price, Bing AI can do image recognition and image generation for FREE. As long as you have the Edge browser, which in my opinion, is pretty good.
Bottom-line
I won’t bet on this one, and I can hardly tell what’s future of Perplexity AI would look like.
For now, it is not impressive at all.
It’s just like another chatbot, nothing special about it, and it’s not even cheap.
I’m going to stick with Bing AI and enjoy most of the features, all integrated nicely within Edge browser – for free.
