Perplexity AI: How does it stack up towards ChatGPT?

Ever since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, we’ve turn out to be more and more reliant on generative AI for analysis and inventive duties. Nonetheless, fashionable AI chatbots are notoriously liable to producing inaccurate textual content, a phenomenon generally often known as “hallucinations”. However a brand new platform, Perplexity AI, now believes that it has the answer to this long-standing drawback of misinformation. Perplexity combines the performance of conventional engines like google like Google with fashionable conversational AI, even utilizing the identical basis as ChatGPT.

So is Perplexity probably the most dependable AI obtainable to this point, or is it simply one other ChatGPT competitor driving the hype wave? Let’s discover out.

Perplexity AI payments itself as a conversational various to conventional engines like google like Google with the power to grasp pure language questions. In comparison with different fashionable chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity doesn’t fetch solutions from its coaching information. As an alternative, it consults a wide range of on-line sources to generate correct and constant responses.

Perplexity isn’t the primary platform to enlist the assistance of a search engine to fight misinformation and AI hallucinations. Microsoft was arguably the primary to market with Bing Chat, which has since been renamed to Copilot. We additionally know that Google’s analysis group arrived on the identical conclusion internally, as a LaMDA weblog submit from 2022 explains. With exterior sources at their disposal, massive language fashions achieve the power to generate factually correct responses.

It’s possible you’ll marvel: how does Perplexity differ vs Copilot and Google’s Gemini if all three can search the web? Merely put, it goals to be a substitute for conventional engines like google, offering direct solutions with citations to your questions. It’s conversational to an extent, however not as a lot of a talkative chatbot as the opposite AI platforms.

In my testing, I’ve observed that Perplexity’s responses resemble that of Google’s Search Generative Expertise, an AI-powered abstract function obtainable in choose international locations. Nonetheless, response size, comprehensiveness, and accuracy can fluctuate fairly a bit between AI platforms, as I’ll illustrate in a later part.

All in all, Perplexity AI provides:

• Conversational search outcomes, with an emphasis on quoting sources for every declare or thought.
• The flexibility to modify between completely different language fashions, that means you don’t have to make use of the GPT household should you don’t wish to.
• Broad informational search or targeted in particular areas like Reddit discussions, YouTube movies, tutorial papers, and Wolfram Alpha.

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine at the beginning. You possibly can change over to a “Writing” mode, however its defaults don’t concentrate on inventive textual content era like ChatGPT. For each message you ship, Perplexity will analyze wherever between a handful of on-line sources to over two dozen web sites, that means it typically provides fairly complete solutions.

Against this, ChatGPT’s free tier doesn’t maintain a candle to Perplexity’s knowledge-seeking skill. Plus, the previous has a tough information cut-off of early 2023. The state of affairs solely improves should you’re keen to pay $20 month-to-month for ChatGPT Plus, which permits the chatbot to entry on-line sources. Even so, it gained’t all the time search the web as totally as Perplexity.

Perplexity additionally provides a paid subscription that prices $20 month-to-month or $200 yearly. This unlocks Professional Searches, which basically forces the AI to seek the advice of a bigger variety of on-line sources. As a Perplexity Professional person, it’s also possible to change to completely different language fashions like GPT-4 even these from competing AI firms like Anthropic’s Claude mannequin.

To summarize, right here’s a desk that showcases Perplexity’s essential variations vs ChatGPT:

Is Perplexity AI higher than ChatGPT?

With the idea out of the best way, it’s time to search out out if Perplexity AI really delivers higher outcomes than ChatGPT. I despatched each chatbots three equivalent prompts with out providing any extra context. Right here’s how they responded:

In our very first immediate, it turns into clear that Perplexity’s search engine nature makes it higher suited to reply nuanced questions. Particularly, Perplexity delved into the cultural causes behind Japan’s love for optical media. ChatGPT, however, didn’t acknowledge the growing older inhabitants’s choice for legacy applied sciences or Japan’s botched transition to the digital period.

Each ChatGPT and Perplexity supply equally useful strategies, although the latter learn via 5 completely different sources. ChatGPT’s coaching information covers the highlights of a preferred vacationer vacation spot so it doesn’t have to depend on exterior sources. That mentioned, Perplexity does supply extra suggestions for my journey, together with climate and transit info.

The dangerous results of MSG, or lack thereof, have been debated for many years. Each AI platforms delivered an correct reply, finally assuring us that MSG is protected for consumption in small quantities. However solely Perplexity might supply verifiable sources to again up its claims, with hyperlinks on the prime and embedded in-text. If this was a query I had no prior information about, Perplexity would positively allay my issues higher than ChatGPT.

Winner: Slight edge to Perplexity

Much like Midjourney and a handful of different AI platforms, Perplexity is the product of a small San Francisco-based AI startup. The corporate’s present CEO, Aravind Srinivas, labored at OpenAI earlier than beginning his personal enterprise, alongside three different co-founders.

Perplexity has attracted over $73 million in funding from tech heavyweights like Institutional Enterprise Companions (IVP), chipmaker Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Whereas that will sound like a small quantity compared to OpenAI’s explosive $17 billion funding to this point, Perplexity doesn’t plan to develop or prepare its personal AI fashions to the same extent. To not point out, the corporate has solely existed since 2022 so it has a wholesome valuation for its age.

With its ex-OpenAI management and powerful monetary backing, Perplexity is about as protected to make use of as every other established AI chatbot. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless a non-public firm so that you gained’t be capable of discover it on the inventory market and you can’t spend money on it as a person. For that, it must launch an preliminary public providing (IPO), an occasion that usually takes place a number of years into an organization’s lifecycle.