Perplexity AI: the answer engine with a lot of question marks

Perplexity wants to be more than just an answer engine. On Wednesday, it launched Personal Computer, a new AI agent tool that can turn a spare Mac into a locally run AI system, pitching it as “a digital proxy for you.”

Personal Computer will run 24/7 on a dedicated device on your local network, have full access to your files and apps, and be controllable from anywhere and on any device, Perplexity said. That deeper access makes it a more personalized version of a similar product Perplexity launched last month, Perplexity Computer, a cluster of agents it described as a “general-purpose digital worker.”

A federal judge has issued an order blocking Perplexity’s web browser-based AI agents from placing Amazon orders on a user’s behalf, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. In a ruling on Monday, US District Judge Maxine Chesney writes that Amazon has “provided strong evidence” that Perplexity’s Comet browser accesses user accounts “without authorization” from the retail giant.

Amazon sued Perplexity in November, alleging that it “repeatedly requested” that the AI startup stop letting its agents buy products for customers. The company accused Perplexity of “intruding” into its marketplace and user accounts with Comet’s agentic shopping feature, in violation of computer fraud and abuse laws. Amazon also alleged that Perplexity attempted to “conceal” its agentic activities by “misrepresenting the Comet browser as Google Chrome.”

The New York Times has escalated its legal battle against the AI startup Perplexity, as it’s now suing the AI “answer engine” for allegedly producing and profiting from responses that are “verbatim or substantially similar copies” of the publication’s work.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Friday, claims Perplexity “unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes” content from the NYT. It comes after the outlet’s repeated demands for Perplexity to stop using content from its website, as the NYT sent cease-and-desist notices to the AI startup last year and most recently in July, according to the lawsuit. The Chicago Tribune also filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity on Thursday.

Let’s talk about AI and what I’ve been calling the “DoorDash problem.” This is about to define the next battle in AI, and it might completely transform not only how you order a sandwich — but also how the entire internet economy works in general.

So what, exactly, is the DoorDash problem? Briefly, it’s what happens when an AI interface gets between a service provider, like DoorDash, and you, who might send an AI to go order a sandwich from the internet instead of using apps and websites yourself.

Amazon doesn’t want to be a part of Perplexity’s AI-powered shopping experience. In a post on Tuesday, the ecommerce giant says it has “repeatedly requested” that Perplexity stop allowing its Comet AI browser to buy products for customers, which Perplexity has responded to by accusing Amazon of “bullying.”

Perplexity’s AI browser, Comet, currently offers an agentic AI feature that can find and purchase products from various websites — including Amazon — on your behalf. But now, Perplexity says it has received an “aggressive legal threat” from Amazon that demands that it stop allowing its AI assistant to shop for users — something the AI startup claims is at odds with Amazon’s values.

The AI search startup Perplexity is allegedly skirting restrictions meant to stop its AI web crawlers from accessing certain websites, according to a report from Cloudflare. In the report, Cloudflare claims that when Perplexity encounters a block, the startup will conceal its crawling identity “in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences.”

The report only adds to concerns about Perplexity vacuuming up content without permission, as the company got caught barging past paywalls and ignoring sites’ robots.txt files last year. At the time, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas blamed the activity on third-party crawlers used by the site.

Perplexity has just launched its agentic answer to Google Chrome — it’s called Comet, and it knocked out a slate of tasks on my behalf, though I think I could’ve done some faster myself. The new AI-powered browser is currently only available to Perplexity Max subscribers or through an early access waitlist, and it’s supposed to simplify the way you browse the web by infusing AI into practically everything you do.

For one, it replaces Google Search results with its Perplexity AI “answer engine,” which appears in your browser window when you type a query into the address bar. Unlike your typical search engine, Perplexity will first surface links to relevant websites and then generate information about what you’re looking for. Comet’s distilled search results come in handy when you want it to narrow down your results for you, but it’s a bit jarring not to see the massive selection of websites suggested by Google.

Perplexity, the startup behind the AI “answer” engine, has just launched its own web browser. The browser, called Comet, incorporates Perplexity’s AI search tools and assistant in a way that CEO Aravind Srinivas says “transforms entire browsing sessions into single, seamless interactions.”

Comet will only be available to users who subscribe to the $200 per month Perplexity Max plan before rolling out more widely on an invite-only basis. The browser uses Perplexity as its primary search engine, which serves up AI-generated responses to queries based on results from around the web. It’s also supposed to be able to buy products on your behalf and help you book hotels.

Perplexity’s iOS App just got an update enabling support for the company’s conversational AI voice assistant. Now Apple users can activate the assistant in the app and ask it to perform tasks like writing emails, setting reminders, and making dinner reservations.

You can even navigate away from the app and continue to speak to Perplexity, although it doesn’t yet support screen sharing like it does on Android. Meanwhile, some of the conversational AI stuff Apple has promised for the Apple Intelligence-powered Siri could still be more than a year away. And unlike Apple Intelligence, Perplexity’s assistant can do these things on older devices, like my iPhone 13 mini.

Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said he didn’t want to testify in a trial about how to resolve Google’s search monopoly because he feared retribution from Google. But after being subpoenaed to appear in court, he seized the moment to pitch a business opportunity for his AI company: buying Chrome.

If Judge Amit Mehta sees things the way the Justice Department does, he could force Google to spin out its popular web browser — including the free open source Chromium browser that many other web browsers are built on. Google says this remedy is playing with fire, and could result in a new Chromium owner charging for the product or failing to keep it running in an adequate way, causing ripple effects across the browser industry.

The AI search engine Perplexity is launching an integration with Tripadvisor that will add more information about hotels. Now, when you search for places to stay, Perplexity will present you with a neatly organized list of hotels, alongside summaries of why it chose them using information sourced from Tripadvisor.

In an example shared by Perplexity, a search for “hotels in Madrid for a business trip” yields a result for Hotel Regina, which the search engine says you should choose “if you want a centrally located hotel in Madrid with exceptional service and a rich breakfast offering.” It also displays its ratings and images from Tripadvisor as well as a list of perks, like “location,” “service,” and “cleanliness.”

Perplexity is rolling out a new feature that will let Pro subscribers purchase a product without leaving its AI search engine. When searching for a product using Perplexity, Pro members based in the US can now choose a “Buy with Pro” button that will automatically order the product using saved shipping and billing information.

Perplexity says all products purchased through Buy with Pro come with free shipping. For products that don’t support Buy with Pro, Perplexity will redirect users to the merchant’s website to complete their purchase.

AI startup Perplexity, which offers an AI search engine, published a blog post today pushing back on News Corp’s lawsuit against the company.

Perplexity has recently come under significant scrutiny following accusations that it scraped content without permission, and News Corp, which is the parent company of the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal-owner Dow Jones, alleged that Perplexity’s search engine “copies on a massive scale.”

News Corp, the parent company of media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, is suing the AI search engine Perplexity for infringing copyrighted content. In a lawsuit filed on Monday, News Corp alleges Perplexity copies news articles, analyses, and opinions “on a massive scale.”

Perplexity is an AI startup that trains its AI search models using content from around the web, allowing it to respond to user queries with a summary of its sources. As outlined in the lawsuit, Perplexity bills itself as a platform that lets users “skip the links” to online articles, which News Corp alleges drives “customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.”

The New York Times has demanded that AI search engine startup Perplexity stop using content from its site in a cease and desist letter sent to the company, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Times, which is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft over allegedly illegally training models on its content, says the startup has been using its content without permission, a claim made earlier this year by Forbes and Condé Nast.

The Journal included this passage from the letter:

Perplexity has launched a major upgrade to its Pro Search AI tool, which it says “understands when a question requires planning, works through goals step-by-step, and synthesizes in-depth answers with greater efficiency.”

Examples on Perplexity’s website of what Pro Search can do include a query asking the best time to see the northern lights in Iceland or Finland. It breaks down its research process into three searches: the best times to see the northern lights in Iceland and Finland; the top viewing locations in Iceland; and the top viewing locations in Finland. It then provides a detailed answer addressing all aspects of the question, including when to view the northern lights in either country and where.

In every hype cycle, certain patterns of deceit emerge. In the last crypto boom, it was “ponzinomics” and “rug pulls.” In self-driving cars, it was “just five years away!” In AI, it’s seeing just how much unethical shit you can get away with.

Perplexity, which is in ongoing talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, is trying to create a Google Search competitor. Perplexity isn’t trying to create a “search engine,” though — it wants to create an “answer engine.” The idea is that instead of combing through a bunch of results to answer your own question with a primary source, you’ll simply get an answer Perplexity has found for you. “Factfulness and accuracy is what we care about,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told The Verge.

In the coming weeks, Reddit will start blocking most automated bots from accessing its public data. You’ll need to make a licensing deal, like Google and OpenAI have done, to use Reddit content for model training and other commercial purposes.

While this has technically been Reddit’s policy already, the company is now enforcing it by updating its robots.txt file, a core part of the web that dictates how web crawlers are allowed to access a site. “It’s a signal to those who don’t have an agreement with us that they shouldn’t be accessing Reddit data,” the company’s chief legal officer, Ben Lee, tells me. “It’s also a signal to bad actors that the word ‘allow’ in robots.txt doesn’t mean, and has never meant, that they can use the data however they want.”