Meet Perplexity

Liron Dorfman
May 29
5 min read

Man in glasses reading a book with a laptop open displaying "Perplexity." Bookshelves in the background, coffee mug on desk. Cozy study scene.

While ChatGPT has become widely synonymous with Artificial Intelligence tools and is the focus of most media and social network discussions, people sometimes also mention graphic creation tools, such as Bing AI, Midjourney, and DALL-E. However, when it comes to tools that deal with information, tools that actually help with locating, summarizing, and verifying information quickly and efficiently, it seems that fewer people are familiar with a competitor to ChatGPT. One such tool, which has been gaining popularity in the past year, is Perplexity – a web search engine designed to make reliable and accurate information accessible to users from various fields. In an era of multiple information sources, this tool enables quick and efficient location, summarization, and verification of information.

What is Perplexity?

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that combines advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to understand questions in natural language and provide summarized, accurate, and source-based answers. Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity doesn't just present a list of links, but provides a direct answer, along with references to the information sources from which the answer was constructed.

In Perplexity's latest update, launched in February 2025, a feature called "Deep Research" was added. It allows for conducting in-depth research and summarizing information from hundreds of different sources in a single answer. Additionally, the tool now allows all users to process long documents free of charge, including uploading files and receiving summaries or insights from them, even without a paid subscription. These updates expand the usage possibilities of Perplexity for various professional and academic needs. The tool enables students, researchers, and lecturers to conduct comprehensive literature reviews, easily locate and analyze current articles and sources, and quickly and efficiently summarize extensive amounts of information from various fields of knowledge. The research reports which are generated by this tool include organized references which can be exported to files, shared, and further developed.

The company behind Perplexity is "Perplexity AI," headquartered in San Francisco. The company was founded in 2022 and employs approximately 100 people as of 2025. The company is currently in an advanced growth stage, with significant funding, having already completed several large funding rounds in which prominent entities, including Nvidia, invested.

The Advantages of Perplexity

Up-to-date answers - Unlike AI tools that are based primarily on existing databases or knowledge learned up to a certain point in time, Perplexity operates dynamically. It performs current searches for every question it receives. This means that the answers received don't rely only on old information or past articles, but also incorporate data, news, and sources that were published very recently. Thus, users receive responses based on the most relevant and up-to-date information, sometimes even content published on the same day.
Source presentation - Citations and links accompany every answer, so the reliability of the information can always be verified.
Ability to return to previous topics and delve deeper - Perplexity offers a continuous conversation experience through a "Thread Continuity" mechanism, which means that all the history of questions, answers, and sources collected are saved in the chat, called “Thread”, so one can return at any time to his/her personal conversation library, making it easier to manage information and track search and learning processes. Users can ask follow-up questions or delve deeper into a specific topic without losing context and without needing to start over each time. The system remembers what was said before and enables searching and deepening, similar to an ongoing dialogue, rather than a series of disconnected queries.
Interface - The tool is available on both a website and as an app for iOS and Android devices, making it easily accessible from any device, including computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Although the interface itself is displayed only in English, users can type questions and receive answers in other languages, including summaries, translations, and explanations. The interface is organized intuitively: a central search box alongside access to search history and advanced tools for focusing on specific sources. After creating an account and starting to use it, additional tools become available to the user.
Free and flexible - There's a free version, and a paid Pro version that allows choosing different AI models, uploading files, and more.

The Disadvantages and Challenges of Perplexity at Present

Limitations in creativity - The tool primarily focuses on finding existing information and summarizing it, rather than on creative writing or producing innovative content, areas where tools like ChatGPT excel.
Dependence on source quality - The quality of the answer depends on the quality and reliability of the sources from which the information is extracted. Sources should be verified, especially on sensitive topics.
Less suitable for code writing and programmer support - Perplexity's support for solving programming problems or creating code is limited compared to other AI tools.

Comparison Between Information Retrieval Tools

Characteristic	Google	ChatGPT	Perplexity
Type of result	List of links	Conversation, Content Creation, Code	Summarized answer with sources
Up-to-date	Up-to-date, but requires filtering	Not always up-to- date (no plugin)	Real-time
View Sources	Depends on the sites	Not always	Yes
Creativity	Limited	Very high	Limited
Option for follow-up questions	No	Yes	Yes

Two notes regarding above table:

ChatGPT excels in creativity, text composition, writing assistance, and code, but the information it provides is not always current and typically does not cite sources.
Google provides diverse search results, but requires the user to filter and summarize the information themselves.

And what about comparison to Gemini and Claude?

Although tools like Gemini (by Google) and Claude (by Anthropic) currently offer advanced AI capabilities, Perplexity has unique advantages that distinguish it from them as well. Perplexity's main advantage is that it combines real-time search and presents summarized answers along with clear and immediate sources for every answer. This is a feature that is not always available or emphasized in other tools. Additionally, Perplexity enables continuous conversation management and context preservation, focused search in professional sources, and an efficient interface that is specially adapted for those seeking quick, reliable, and well-founded answers. While Gemini and Claude excel in creativity, processing long documents, or integration with additional services, Perplexity emphasizes transparency, up-to-date date, and operational simplicity.

In Summary, Perplexity constitutes an advanced tool for research, information search, and independent learning. It provides quick, summarized, and source-based answers, enabling an intuitive, conversation-based search experience. As such, it has become a tool I personally use whenever I need to get a quick reply that I can verify by examining supporting evidence. It is available at https://www.perplexity.ai and, as mentioned, also in app stores – both Apple's App Store and Google Play's Android Store. You are welcome to try it. We would be happy if you write your opinion about it in the comments to this article.