06/29/2024

Perplexity Is a 'BS' Machine

The AI-powered search startup has made up things out of thin air

Considering Perplexity’s bold ambition and the investment it has taken from Jeff Bezos’ family fund, Nvidia, and famed investor Balaji Srinivasan, among others, it is surprisingly unclear what the AI search startup actually is.

Earlier this year, speaking to WIRED, Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO, described his product—a chatbot that gives natural-language answers to prompts and can, the company says, access the internet in real time—as an "answer engine."

A few weeks later, shortly before a funding round valuing the company at a billion dollars was announced, he told Forbes, "It's almost like Wikipedia and ChatGPT had a kid." More recently, after Forbes accused Perplexity of plagiarizing its content, Srinivas told The Associated Press it was a mere "aggregator of information."

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.