How Perplexity aims to reinvent web search

The way we search the web—picking through a list of links, some of them paid for, some gamed to show up high on the page—has remained virtually unchanged for more than two decades. Then came AI chatbots, which can understand plain-language questions and return direct answers, potentially reshuffling the $110 billion search ad business now dominated by Google.  One-year-old Perplexity’s “answer engine” is at the forefront of this new world of chatbot-assisted search.

Perplexity uses a combination of homegrown large language models (LLMs), third-party models (OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude 2, among others), and web crawlers to return results that are highly relevant and fastidiously cited. Perplexity’s secret sauce is its embrace of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI that finds the right documents on the web to help the LLM create more contextualized and accurate answers. This works especially well for open-ended questions such as “How should I prepare for my vacation in Rome?” and less well in searches for specific things like local business hours and live sports scores.

Users can type queries at Perplexity’s website or speak them into Perplexity’s mobile apps (its iOS app arrived in March 2023; its Android one in May), which have been downloaded more than 2 million times, the company says, and are now responding to more than 1 million queries per day. Perplexity recently announced it will be the search mechanism in the buzzy new R1 AI device, from Rabbit, which is expected to ship this spring.

“We do not have to challenge Google’s search market share in order to succeed,” says Perplexity cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas. “In fact, that’s precisely why I think we have a winning shot: We are operating in a new segment of AI assistants, chatbots, and answer bots where new businesses and products will continue to be created.”

Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91033202/perplexity-most-innovative-companies-2024?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

созданный 1y | 19 мар. 2024 г., 12:20:23


Войдите, чтобы добавить комментарий

Другие сообщения в этой группе

5 work-from-home purchases worth splurging for

Aside from the obvious, one of the best parts of the work-from-home revolution is being able to outfit your workspace as you see fit.

And if you spend your days squinting at a tiny lapto

14 июл. 2025 г., 05:40:05 | Fast company - tech
A newly discovered exoplanet rekindles humanity’s oldest question: Are we alone?

Child psychologists tell us that around the age of five or six, children begin to seriously contemplate the world around them. It’s a glorious moment every parent recognizes—when young minds start

13 июл. 2025 г., 11:10:06 | Fast company - tech
How Watch Duty became a go-to app during natural disasters

During January’s unprecedented wildfires in Los Angeles, Watch Duty—a digital platform providing real-time fire data—became the go-to app for tracking the unfolding disaster and is credit

13 июл. 2025 г., 06:30:05 | Fast company - tech
Why the AI pin won’t be the next iPhone

One of the most frequent questions I’ve been getting from business execs lately is whether the

12 июл. 2025 г., 12:10:02 | Fast company - tech
Microsoft will soon delete your Authenticator passwords. Here are 3 password manager alternatives

Users of Microsoft apps are having a rough year. First, in May, the Windows maker

12 июл. 2025 г., 09:40:03 | Fast company - tech
Yahoo Creators platform hits record revenue as publisher bets big on influencer-led content

Yahoo’s bet on creator-led content appears to be paying off. Yahoo Creators, the media company’s publishing platform for creators, had its most lucrative month yet in June.

Launched in M

11 июл. 2025 г., 17:30:04 | Fast company - tech
GameStop’s Nintendo Switch 2 stapler sells for more than $100,000 on eBay after viral mishap

From being the face of memestock mania to going viral for inadvertently stapling the screens of brand-new video game consoles, GameStop is no stranger to infamy.

Last month, during the m

11 июл. 2025 г., 12:50:04 | Fast company - tech