In the fast world of AI, we’re always looking for the best search engine. With the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, hopes were high, but reality soon struck. Users found themselves wanting more—reliable, up-to-date answers akin to Google’s prowess. ChatGPT fell short, plagued by outdated responses and inaccuracies.
Here comes Perplexity.ai, a new startup from August 2022, aiming to change how we search. Fueled by the desire to provide users with accurate, multi-source citations, Perplexity.ai swiftly gained traction, amassing over 10 million monthly users and securing investments, including one from tech mogul Jeff Bezos.
Denis Yarats, co-founder and CTO of Perplexity.ai, says they started with a Text-to-SQL tool but switched to making a smart search engine. They were inspired by OpenAI’s big language models and found a way to connect user questions with good info.
Their method, called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), mixes AI that makes things with a retriever to give answers supported by specific facts. This way, Perplexity.ai can give quick and accurate search results, a method many industries use.
Behind the scenes, Perplexity.ai uses both old-fashioned and new ways to search. Their web crawler, PerplexityBot, scours the internet, indexing content to ensure freshness and relevance. Additionally, the integration of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), an NLP model by Google, enhances understanding and ranking of web pages.
Despite challenges posed by established competitors like Google, Perplexity.ai remains undeterred. They want to stand out in the search world by really understanding meanings and getting information without any bias. Unlike Google, Perplexity.ai prioritizes user-centric features over ad-driven agendas, offering an alternative approach to search.
In a world full of information, Perplexity.ai is a leader in innovation, changing how people use the internet. With their new search model powered by AI, they bring in a fresh way to explore online, making sure it’s accurate, reliable, and makes users happy.