My Favorite ChatGPT Alternative - Perplexity Has iOS + Android Apps, GPT-4, and More

Multimodal responses, erudite answers, source links, everything you need

Perplexity AI is the best-kept secret in generative AI. It provided up-to-date, accurate, and source-linked conversational search responses a month before Bing Chat’s debut. It now also has targeted access to several information sources such as YouTube, Wolfram Alpha, Reddit, and Wikipedia, as well as multimodal responses. And it just added access to GPT-4 … for free.

Double-click on the video above to get a full demo walk-through, including some nuances you might not immediately notice.

What is Perplexity AI?

Perplexity AI, or Perplexity, is a conversational search and answer engine that provides a similar experience to Bing Chat. However, it currently doesn’t run ads, and the responses are a bit faster unless you use the new Copilot mode.

It is a search and answer engine because it doesn’t just provide links. Perplexity also answers your questions in natural language, much like you might expect from a news media organization or an expert.

The company announced a $25 million funding round in March and the launch of its iPhone app. It has been busy ever since. A significant UI and feature update and the Android app landed in April. In May, the company began rolling out the new specialty knowledge base information sources, and three days ago, GPT-4 was added. Perplexity was very good in January. It is exceptional today.

What’s New

Here are several new Perplexity features that should command your attention. Time stamps from the video above are included where applicable.

1. 🔎 Choose your search model (1:37) - Perplexity now allows you to search the entire internet or focus on some leading internet knowledge bases, including Reddit, Wikipedia, Wolfram, and YouTube. It also offers two other options called Academic and News.

   

2. ⏯ See multimodal video responses (2:10) - Searches using the YouTube model returns both text responses answering your question as well as links to YouTube video that you can watch in a player without leaving Perplexity.

   

3. ⿲ See multimodal data responses in tables - The Wolfram | Alpha model can return queries related to data laid out in tables. This was highlighted as a new feature of Google Bard recently with automatic export to Sheets. The tabular response and easy export to spreadsheets is really useful.

   

4. 📊 See multimodal data responses in charts (3:59) - The Wolfram | Alpha model can also provide responses that include data in charts.

5. 😯 Use GPT-4 for free (5:12) - You can use GPT-4 to generate 5 responses every 4 hours. This limitation is likely due to the fees it must pay to OpenAI to run inference using GPT-4. However, if you are a free user of ChatGPT, you don’t even have access to GPT-4. With Perplexity, you can access it anytime … in moderation. 😀

   

6. ❓Refine your request with automated clarifying questions (9:09) - This may be the most impressive update. Perplexity will ask you to offer additional information to refine your request for certain types of queries. This feature only appears to be active for Copilot / GPT-4 responses.

7. 🤖 Check out the Android app (video here) - Perplexity’s Android app appears to have all of the web app's features. The iPhone app, by contrast, has a subset of features and much more closely resembles Perplexity’s feature set from March. I expect the iPhone app's next version to catch up to Android in functionality.

ChatGPT & Bing Chat Have Competition

It often seems like everyone assumed that the most likely challenger to ChatGPT and Bing Chat would be Google Bard or some future Google LLM-based application. That may still happen, but it is clear that Bard has a lot of catching up to do. Perplexity is already a great alternative. And it’s free to use and ad-free as well.

I currently use Perplexity, Bing Chat, and Google each for about one-third of my searches. More than 95% of my search went to Google in 2022. The world has changed because the new search engines are superior to Google unless I am simply looking for a URL link. You can see the seeds of Google’s existential crisis every time you open up Perplexity.

• Do you expect to shift your searches away from Google to Perplexity or Bing Chat?

• What do you think Perplexity still needs to improve to up its game?

***Let me know what you think in the comments. I’d like to hear your perspective