On March 14, I published a blog post providing some of my personal impressions of five AI chatbots: ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Perplexity AI, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. Continuing on from that overview, I’ve decided to delve deeper into each chatbot. My primary interest in these chatbots is the time they save me when compared to conducting multiple Google searches. They pretty much all save me time, but some do it better than others. Perplexity AI was one of my favorites, especially for generating research results with minimal inserted advertising. I also like its “claim to fame” or raison d’être (as provided by Perplexity AI): “Perplexity AI emphasizes providing accurate and reliable cited answers from various sources with minimal advertising. The platform emphasizes factual information from reputable sources to avoid incorrect or unsubstantiated answers.”

Refining requests

I asked, “What is the best mesh Wi-Fi router for a home network?” Perplexity AI responded by asking for the size of my house and my budget. It then provided several options categorized as Best for Most People, Best for Power Users, and Best for Novice Users. There were, of course, footnoted links to allow purchasing from Amazon, and to the article that Perplexity based its recommendations.

Summarizing reports

This was a huge time saver, and its results were amazing. I had an 80-page report for which I had it write summaries of each chapter. I then used this output to write an Executive Summary, which I was able to do in about an hour. Putting the Executive Summary together without this help from Perplexity AI would have taken me 3-4 hours.

Summarizing entire books

This was a great way to remember the main points of books I had read. It did a great job.

Proofreading a document

It corrected grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It also made suggestions to improve clarity and focus.  In each case, the output was better than what I had written. It also saved me the hour it would have taken an inhouse editor to proof and revise.

Writing a blog post

This was disappointing as it was mostly generic material from the web, and much of it sounded like advertising copy.  On the other hand, when I submitted a blog post I had written for editing, it produced a great result based on the proofreading and clarification that it provided.

What’s to Like?

• It is fast.
• The user interface is intuitive.
• The iPhone App works as well as the desktop version.
• The voice-to-text worked exceedingly well.
• The footnotes allow looking at sources without cluttering up the inline text.
• The data comes from recent web searches and seemed quite accurate.

What’s not to like?

• It costs $20 per month.
• I didn’t like its original writing.
• It doesn’t have a create image capability. Rather it just points to images on the web or as contained in other applications.

Overall Grade

In summary, I’d give Perplexity AI a B+ (or on a good day, an A-).  Stay tuned for my future reviews of the other AI chatbots I have been using.