Perplexity
Perplexity AI · December 2022
Why It Matters
Pioneered the 'answer engine' category — combining real-time web search with LLM synthesis to provide cited, up-to-date answers. Became the first serious challenger to Google Search.
Description
An 'answer engine' that combines real-time web search with large language model reasoning to provide direct, cited answers instead of a list of links. Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity reads and synthesizes information from multiple sources, then presents a coherent answer with inline citations so users can verify the information. Supports follow-up questions for iterative research.
Notable Milestones
- ▸First mainstream AI-powered search alternative to Google
- ▸Cited answers with real-time web data
Key Innovations
Related Research (1)
Combined a neural retriever (that searches a knowledge base) with a sequence-to-sequence generator, allowing the model to 'look up' relevant documents…