Perplexity Assistant Challenges Google's AI Dominance on Android

'Perplexity Assistant' Uses AI to Help You Complete Tasks on Your Android

The next phase of AI evolution looks set to be focused around agents: AI bots that can not only chat to you and draw pictures, but also carry out tasks on your behalf. These new AI tools won't just be able to tell you about the best hotels close to your next vacation destination -- they'll be able to make the reservation for you. These kinds of multimodal agents are being worked on by Google, OpenAI, and others, and now Perplexity has announced Perplexity Assistant for Android (as per The Verge, Perplexity says iOS doesn't give apps the necessary hooks into the operating system for an iPhone version to be possible right now). You can find the assistant in the main Perplexity app for Android, and it's available to use whether you're using Perplexity for free or paying for a subscription. You'll see a pop-up ad for Perplexity Assistant in the app which you can tap on to enable it, or you can find it by tapping your profile picture (top left), then Enable assistant. During the setup process, you'll be asked to set Perplexity Assistant as the default assistant on Android, instead of Google Assistant or Google Gemini. This is the same process as it is for setting any other default assistant, and you'll be directed to the right screen: It means you can launch Perplexity Assistant with whatever the assistant shortcut is (like a long-press on the power button). When the assistant is active, you can use your voice to interact with it or give it commands, or tap the keyboard icon in the lower right corner to type instead. There are no settings to manage, but there is a button in the lower left corner for switching to camera mode, which lets you ask Perplexity Assistant about anything in your surroundings. Perplexity hasn't been overly forthcoming in terms of what you can actually do with its new assistant, but it has mentioned booking dinner (via OpenTable), playing songs (in Spotify and YouTube), calling cabs (through Uber), drafting emails, and setting reminders. You can see a few examples here. It's worth experimenting with to see what it can and can't do on your phone. You can ask for directions to a good coffee shop nearby, for example: Perplexity Assistant will search the web for recommendations, ask you to make a pick, then load up Google Maps. It's debatable whether that's any faster or more convenient than just doing the whole process through Google Maps, but it works reliably well. I was also able to call up songs and playlists in Spotify, though again, Spotify's built-in search tools do all this pretty well anyway. It's not an omnipotent digital assistant yet, however -- if you ask Perplexity Assistant to order you something on Amazon, it'll just direct you to the relevant listings pages. Another test I ran was getting Perplexity Assistant to draft an email apologizing for being late, and with a task like this, the generative AI capabilities can be useful. The assistant found the right contact, composed a short email with my apologies, and loaded a draft in the Gmail app, ready to go -- though if you really are sorry about a recent lack of punctuality, it's probably a better idea to actually write out the apology yourself. It's more evidence of where AI assistants are heading, but they're going to need to be granted the relevant hooks into other apps -- like OpenTable and Spotify -- in order to work properly. They're also going to need to be reliable and accurate enough to gain the trust of users, which has traditionally been a problem for AI: You don't want your AI-booked dinner recommendations to be for the wrong week or in the wrong city, for example.

I Tried Out Perplexity Assistant, and Google Should be Absolutely Worried

You can also book Uber and reserve a table at restaurants with Perplexity Assistant. Perplexity has released its first AI assistant for Android smartphones. Dubbed Perplexity Assistant, it takes on Google Assistant with support for actions, reminders, and some interesting new features. I replaced Gemini (and Google Assistant) on my Galaxy S23 with Perplexity Assistant to see what new experiences it brings to the table. And I have to say that it left me pleasantly surprised and made me realize how poor Gemini is. Find out why I say that below. I have used Gemini (previously Google Assistant) for so many years, and my most common task has been to make calls or send messages. So I started testing Perplexity Assistant by asking it to make a call after granting necessary permissions. Surprisingly, it did better than Google Assistant. It doesn't waste time reading aloud the response and then making a call. Instead, it directly places the call which makes the process near-instant and saves precious time. I absolutely love this latency-free experience. Not to mention, Perplexity picks the right contact automatically, which is great. Next, I asked the Perplexity Assistant to find out movies nominated for Oscars 2025 and send the list to a contact of mine. It seamlessly integrated the default messaging app and was ready to send the information generated by Perplexity via SMS. It shows that Perplexity Assistant can carry forward the conversation, remember the context, and perform multiple actions at once. Gemini on Android can also perform multiple actions with the Utilities extension, but I found it less reliable. By the way, Perplexity Assistant doesn't support WhatsApp yet. However, you can send details via email too, and it works just as well as text messages. Overall, for basic calling and messaging, I found Perplexity Assistant better than Google/ Gemini Assistant. Of course, it doesn't support nicknames for contacts yet, but I think Perplexity will only improve it further in future iterations. While you can set reminders with Google Assistant, Perplexity Assistant brings something new and interesting. It can set intelligent reminders, which means you can give descriptive prompts, such as "remind me to watch the next season of Squid Games when it comes out", and Perplexity Assistant handles the rest. Due to deep AI integration and web search, Perplexity can find out the date and set a reminder for you. You don't have to manually look for the dates and set a reminder accordingly. I think it's a great use case for an AI-powered voice assistant. Note that reminders are handled by the Perplexity app, and it's not added to your calendar. Google offers a phenomenal Circle to Search tool on Android, but Perplexity Assistant also does a great job analyzing the screen. You can fire up Perplexity Assistant and say "what am I looking at," and it will analyze the active screen and generate a response immediately. This can be particularly helpful if you're reading an article or a PDF and want to understand the nuances. Furthermore, you can say 'fact-check this article' or 'explain the diagram' to me. There are countless use cases of this feature. Gemini on Android can also do this, but it takes a screenshot and then processes the visual information, which makes it a hassle. I would say screen analysis is one of the best features of Perplexity Assistant. Perplexity comes with camera support which makes it even more helpful. Simply launch Perplexity Assistant and tap on the camera icon to show it what you are looking at. For example, you can show a book and ask it about similar recommendations. If you are visiting another country, you can point the camera to popular monuments and get more information from the Perplexity Assistant. Basically, you can process any visual information in real time. It's somewhat similar to ChatGPT's Live Video mode, which allows you to show the AI assistant what's in front of you and interact with it in real time. However, Perplexity Assistant doesn't support back-and-forth conversation so keep that in mind. Apple unveiled AI-powered Notification Summary with iOS 18, and now Perplexity Assistant has brought Notifications Summary to Android before Google. You can simply say, "catch me up on my notifications" and Perplexity will give a concise rundown of all the important notifications. It's pretty cool and worked flawlessly well on my Android smartphone. Note that you will have to allow notification access to Perplexity in order to use this feature. You can use Perplexity Assistant on Android to book Uber as well. Simply say, "get me an Uber to location," and Perplexity will handle the booking for you. Of course, you need to grant your location permission beforehand. You can also use it to find directions and navigate anywhere you want. It uses Google Maps and directly opens the navigation screen without wasting any time. Next, you can reserve restaurants with Perplexity Assistant. You can find local restaurants, get recommendations, and ask Perplexity to book a table at the restaurant. Just like Google Assistant, you can search and play songs and videos with Perplexity Assistant too. However, Perplexity takes it further by supporting descriptive prompts. For instance, you can say "play me the final song from Interstellar," and it understands what you are looking for, and plays that specific track for you. For my testing, I asked it to play the tense music from The Social Network movie, and it correctly picked Hand Covers Bruise. Wow! You don't have to specify the song or album name. Simply describe the song and Perplexity will do its best to find the song for you. By the way, it connects to Spotify to play songs and uses YouTube for videos. In my testing, I found Perplexity Assistant to be impressive, particularly since it's the first iteration. It already gets many things right in the first release itself. I like that Perplexity Assistant is designed to perform actions and speak less. That said, currently, it doesn't have support for many popular apps such as Google Keep, Calendar, and WhatsApp. I think over the next few releases, Perplexity Assistant can easily become a solid replacement for Google Assistant on Android phones.

Perplexity Assistant rivals Gemini for Android as your next action model AI

Another AI assistant is rolling out for Android, but this one brings the promise of real-world value. The Perplexity Assistant is an AI model that can actually hail rides from Uber and perform tasks through apps on your phone. We've seen the promise of LAMs (large action models) before. The idea is an AI model that can perform tasks on a device. To a degree, Google Gemini is both an LLM and an LAM, allowing you to open apps and complete actions throughout your phone, though it has some limits. The newest model on the scene seems to be offering Android users an alternative. Perplexity Assistant is launching today for all Android users on the Google Play Store. The app acts as an AI assistant in much the same way Android users are used to. With the press and hold of the power button, Perplexity AI shows up in the bottom third of your screen. You have to set it to replace Gemini, of course. The most impressive part about Perplexity Assistant is that it's able to use Android apps for me outside of a specific ecosystem. While it took some trying and failing, eventually I was able to get it to open Uber and find me a ride to the airport -- something I haven't been able to get other assistants to do. It can also play music through Spotify or YouTube, though that isn't as exciting. It can, however, book dinner reservations using OpenTable, which is pretty neat. As a direct comparison to Gemini, I found that the information it gave me was a little more nuanced. Asking what was in front of me meant that the camera was opened and the assistant analyzed my surroundings, giving me a good, detailed overview of my coffee cup in front of me that was akin to what Gemini Live would offer me. It's worth noting that it took several tries for the Perplexity Assistant to understand that I wanted it to analyzed what the camera was looking at. This app is not bug-free by any means, but it shows a lot of promise. This is something Gemini is able to accomplish in through the Gemini app and wants to further in upcoming updates, but, for now, it takes a little more manual work to get the answer you need. Perplexity Assistant for Android is free on the Google Play Store, and the free subscription will let you use all of the mentioned features. There is a $19.99/month plan for the Perplexity Pro model.

Perplexity Just Launched a Phone Assistant, and It Has Potential

Not everything has to be ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Copilot. There are actually tons of cool AI chatbots you can check out these days. Perplexity is generally regarded as one of the best ones, and it has now just launched an AI assistant for smartphones as well. Perplexity turned its AI chatbot into a nifty phone assistant that can replace Google Assistant/Gemini on your smartphone. You can ask it basically anything you would ask your standard assistant, such as "How's the weather?" or to play you a song. It has a few app integrations under its belt, too -- it's able to play Spotify songs and podcasts, and its able to go into Uber and reserve a ride. It's pretty cool. And it's multimodal, which means that it can scan your screen and analyze pictures you take if you need help in that regard. Close The assistant itself feels pretty natural to use and, if it had more app integrations, it could be a very nice alternative to Gemini. I actually use Gemini's Assistant mode a fair bit, and I gave Perplexity's assistant a spin to see if maybe it's better. It's not quite there yet, but it certainly has potential. I compared both assistants and found that Gemini still does some things better -- mainly regarding integrations with other Google apps. But Perplexity is also quite good and even outperforms it in some scenarios. With a little more polish (I've found that, occasionally, it can get stuck while performing actions even when it knows what it should do), I think it can be a really solid option if you're looking for something smart to replace your phone's regular assistant with. Perplexity has been geared from the beginning as an accuracy-focused AI product, so it makes sense that the philosophy also translates to its AI assistant. I asked both Gemini and Perplexity to pull up the latest album from Bad Bunny which, as of the time of writing, was released roughly three weeks ago. Since it's a relatively recent music release, it was a good way to see how well both assistants are caught up with modern times. Perplexity successfully searched for the latest album on Spotify and began playing a random song from it, while Gemini began playing an older album from 2023 without giving it much thought -- although it did correct itself once I questioned it. I re-tried it a few times and every single time it pulled up the older album first. Gemini may be just playing what its knowledge base says the latest album is rather than just searching for it, which is what Perplexity did. Close There is some stuff that Gemini still does better. For one, I asked both Gemini and Perplexity to give me directions to the nearest McDonalds, which is about 1 mile away. Gemini gave me directions to one that's located 3.6 miles away from my location -- not the absolute nearest, but still decently close. Perplexity seems to have not really taken a lot of consideration about my actual location other than the city I was in, so it gave me directions to one located around 10 miles away. It's probably not the first one I'd go to in a pinch. I also found Perplexity is able to give accurate insights into places and objects more frequently than Gemini, and the assistant itself feels more conversational, while Gemini still feels as essentially an extension of the chat interface -- despite Gemini Live being a thing for months. Again, with a little more polish and maybe more app integrations, this could be a killer assistant. You can check out Perplexity's assistant within the Perplexity Android app -- it'll prompt you to set it up once you log in. It's not available on iOS just yet, and we don't know when it might be released. Source: Perplexity

Perplexity Assistant launched for Android users: Here's what it can do

The assistant's multimodal functionality enhances its usability. Perplexity has announced the launch of its latest innovation, Perplexity Assistant, now available on the Play Store for Android users. Designed to simplify daily tasks, this AI-powered assistant combines reasoning, web browsing, and app integration to help users manage everything from quick queries to multi-step actions with ease. Perplexity Assistant is built to handle a wide range of tasks. Whether you need to find answers to everyday questions, book a dinner reservation, locate a forgotten song, call a ride, draft emails, or set reminders, the assistant has you covered. Its ability to browse the web means it can also provide intelligent insights, such as finding the correct date and time for a public event and setting a reminder for you. Also read: Perplexity faces legal fire as publishers accuse AI startup of copyright violations One standout feature of Perplexity Assistant is its ability to maintain context across actions. For instance, if you're researching restaurants, you can follow up seamlessly by asking it to reserve a table. However, it may be possible that not all restaurants may support direct bookings. The assistant's multimodal functionality enhances its usability. You can activate the camera and ask questions about what you see -- whether it's an object in front of you or content on your screen. This feature opens up new possibilities for interacting with the world around you, making the assistant a versatile tool for everyday tasks. Also read: Gemini Live now supports images, videos and files on Android: More updates announced Another cool feature is the assistant's ability to turn conversations into actionable tasks. For example, you can start by discussing an upcoming basketball game and then ask it to set an alert before the game starts.

Perplexity's AI assistant goes mobile on Android

The assistant integrates with apps and leverages real-time information and task automation AI conversational search engine Perplexity is going mobile on the Google Play Store with a new Android app. Peeplexity's app pitches itself as a kind of digital Swiss Army knife that can manage tasks for you, including making reservations and identifying objects through your phone's camera. Best of all, the app is free and speaks 15 languages. By leveraging Perplexity's own search engine, the assistant can also tap into real-time web information, so it's not just regurgitating pre-programmed answers. This should, in theory, make it smarter and more versatile than many of its competitors. To juggle all of those abilities, Perplexity can maintain context across multiple tasks. That means it won't double-book you and will remember what you like and don't like. "You can do many cool things like booking an Uber, finding dinner tables, playing an old YouTube video, playing songs, getting directions, and translating Shakespeare, all with voice and a simple action button or gesture," Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas explained on X. "Cool thing about this is everything stays in context. You can start with a conversation about some question you have and follow up to set an action related to it, e.g., getting an alert ahead of a basketball game." Say you want Perplexity to help with your dinner plans. The AI will look for restaurants, check reviews, suggest dishes for you, and book the table on OpenTable, all in one conversation. Srinivas admitted that the restaurant booking "doesn't always work" but promised it would be sorted out soon. This launch comes on the heels of Perplexity's broader expansion efforts, including rolling out Sonar, an API that lets businesses integrate Perplexity's search tech into their own apps. It's part of a growth strategy that also includes acquiring the professional social media platform Read.cv. Clearly, Perplexity is trying to build an ecosystem where its AI doesn't just answer your questions but also becomes an indispensable part of your daily workflow. Whether it'll succeed in creating a full-blown AI assistant that people can't live without remains to be seen Perplexity is facing a crowded market, so anything to stand out will be useful. To beat ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Apple's latest enhancement of Siri through Apple Intelligence will require a lot of creativity from Perplexity. Still, if Perplexity's app can deliver consistently with its multimodal capabilities and app integrations, it stands a real chance of muscling aside those rivals, at least partly. People love novelty, but they hate frustration. If Perplexity can avoid or quickly squash any bugs, you might see a lot of people becoming far less perplexed about AI apps as a concept.

This new AI assistant promises Gemini-like multi-app actions on Android

The assistant can search for information (e.g., finding a song from a movie) and interact with apps to perform tasks like playing music, booking dinner, or setting reminders. AI-powered search provider Perplexity has launched an AI agent for Android. Called Perplexity Assistant, the AI helper is available through the Perplexity app on the Google Play Store and is supported in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi. While we haven't had a chance to try out the new Perplexity Assistant, the company claims it can perform multi-app actions, similar to Gemini's recently acquired chaining actions that Google first demonstrated on the Galaxy S25 series. For example, you can ask the AI to "play that song at the end of Interstellar." It will research the song's name on the web and open a music app on your phone to play it. We're not sure how this would function, but we're guessing you'll have to grant Perplexity some permissions to open and execute commands on your apps. Gemini uses extensions to facilitate chaining actions, but Perplexity hasn't really elaborated on how its AI will facilitate multi-app actions on Android phones. Perplexity Assistant is also multimodal, which means it can answer questions based on voice commands and understand multiple types of data, such as text, images, audio, and video. "You can tell it to turn on the camera and ask about what you see in front of you or on your screen," the company explains. The company lists Perplexity Assistant's other capabilities as follows: "You can book dinner, find a forgotten song, call a ride, draft emails, set reminders, and more." Looks like we'll have to give Perplexity Assistant a go and see how it compares to Gemini.

I tried Perplexity's assistant, and only one thing stops it from being my default phone AI

Perplexity AI is going mobile with a new digital assistant for your Android phone. The company announced the feature this week, explaining that it lets you use Perplexity as usual, but takes things a step further by integrating with other apps on your phone and chaining commands -- meaning you can play media, set reminders, send texts and emails, book rides, learn about things using your camera, and more. Also: Operator isn't worth its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription yet - here's why Perplexity's phone assistant is free and doesn't require a Pro subscription. It's not available for iOS just yet. I decided to give it a try for a while and made it my default phone assistant. Just one thing is keeping me from sticking with it for good: its current lack of integration with my calendar. I started simple. I asked Perplexity to make a list of the best local date-night restaurants and text them to my wife (I used her name). At first, it made a list of restaurants in Orlando, Fla., over 500 miles away. I asked Perplexity if it knew my location, just to make sure I had all the proper permissions turned on, and it identified where I was. A second attempt, asking the same query, produced a much better list of restaurants in Charlotte, NC -- all swanky options perfect for a date night. To push things a little further, I replied that all of those were too far away and asked for restaurants specifically in my city, just outside Charlotte. It populated another list of nice restaurants limited to my city and asked if it could text the list. When I approved, it sent the list as a text message. Also: I changed these 12 settings on my Android phone to instantly improve battery life Playing around with examples I had seen other people use, I was able to get Perplexity to connect with quite a few apps. When I asked for a ride, Perplexity asked where I wanted to go and then fired up Uber with my destination set. Asking it to "Play the most popular songs from the 1960s" brought up Spotify and started playing songs. After a request to "Send an email saying I'm running 10 minutes late," the assistant asked where it should be sent, asked my preferred email client (Gmail), and sent the message. To test out the Google Lens-style capabilities, I pointed it at my TV and asked what movies this actor was in (it was Steve Martin in an episode of Only Murders in the Building). Perplexity told me it couldn't identify people. I asked what TV show I was watching, though, and Perplexity not only identified all three actors on screen, but also identified and summarized the specific episode I was watching. There are a few things the assistant can't do, though. When I pressed for potentially sensitive information, like my bank account balance, it replied that it couldn't access that information. When I asked what was on my Google Calendar, it said it couldn't directly see that information (but you do have the option to set events and reminders directly through the Perplexity assistant). Also: 3 exciting AI features coming to Google Pixel and other Android phones One of the biggest advantages this has over its competition is the ability to stay in context. I can ask it to find a restaurant, check reviews, tell me what's good there, make a reservation, and then navigate to it. Overall, I was pretty impressed with how easy Perplexity AI was to use and what it could handle. I currently have a Pixel 8 Pro and use the built-in assistant quite a bit for adding calendar events and checking my calendar. The fact that Perplexity can't access that yet is probably the biggest thing keeping me from making it my default assistant. In just about every other way, it equals or beats my regular assistant. Also: I tried Google's personalized Daily Listen AI podcast, and it was... interesting If Perplexity can get a few small things worked out, I may just switch for good. To try it out for yourself, you'll need an Android device. Download the Perplexity app (the free version is all you need) and head to your phone's digital assistant settings. You should see "Default digital assistant app." Tap on that, and choose Perplexity from the list. As you use the assistant, it will ask for various permissions the firs time, including microphone and camera, as will the services you attempt to connect.

Perplexity Brings an AI-Powered Virtual Assistant for Android Devices

Perplexity Assistant also has multimodal capabilities Perplexity Assistant is available within the Android app It is available to all Android users for free Perplexity introduced a virtual assistant for Android devices on Thursday. Powered by the company's answer engine, the artificial intelligence (AI) assistant can answer questions, generate messages, as well as perform some app-based tasks as well. Additionally, the Perplexity Assistant also has multimodal capabilities and can access the user's camera to analyse what the user is looking at. The virtual assistant is being added as a part of Perplexity's Android app and will be available to all users with compatible devices for free. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the official handle of Perplexity announced the new AI assistant for Android devices. Dubbed Perplexity Assistant, it is powered by the same answer engine that runs Perplexity's search platform. The post highlighted that it uses reasoning, web search, and app connectivity to perform a wide range of tasks. Announcing the new feature, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said, "This marks the transition for Perplexity from an answer engine to a natively integrated assistant that can call other apps and perform basic tasks for you." Gadgets 360 staff members were able to see and access the virtual assistant. Users can find Perplexity Assistant within the updated app. Once it has been set up, users can summon the assistant to see a bottom sheet with a redesigned logo and blue dot-matrix waveform. The latter indicates that the AI is currently listening. Once a prompt has been added, three moving white lines appear indicating that the request is being processed. At the bottom of the screen, a camera icon, a settings icon, and a keyboard icon have been added. The camera icon allows the AI assistant to access visuals from the device's camera. Users can point the device towards an object and ask Perplexity Assistant a question about it, and it can answer the queries. Coming to the tasks it can perform, the company stated that Perplexity Assistant can book dinner reservations, find a song, book a cab, draft emails, set reminders, and more. Currently, the assistant can access Spotify, Uber, and YouTube apps and can complete tasks that include accessing them. Apart from accessing the apps, the virtual assistant can browse the web to answer a wide range of queries. Powered by AI models, it can also maintain context from one task to another within the same session. This means users can ask follow-up questions without having to repeat the original prompt over and over.

Perplexity's new AI agent can perform multi-step tasks on your Android device

Perplexity announced Thursday that it is beginning to roll out an agentic AI for Android devices, called Perplexity Assistant, which will be able to independently take multi-step actions on behalf of its user. "We are excited to launch the Perplexity Assistant to all Android users," Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote in a post to X on Thursday. "This marks the transition for Perplexity from an answer engine to a natively integrated assistant that can call other apps and perform basic tasks for you." Recommended Videos The Assistant will be available through the Perplexity mobile app and will run atop the platforms existing "answer engine" model. As such, Assistant will have access to the internet. With it, users will be able to set reminders and future actions, much like ChatGPT's new Tasks feature offers. For example, the agent will be able to remind users of an upcoming event by automatically creating a calendar entry at the correct time and date. Users can also use it to take more immediate action such as hailing a ride share or searching for a song, the company noted. The new feature can also access the user's camera so you could, in theory, ask it to look for restaurants in your immediate area and then have it make reservations for you. Perplexity Assistant is free to use as part of the mobile app and will initially be available in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi. How well it will interact with other agentic AIs on the device, such as Gemini or ChatGPT Tasks, remains to be seen. Agents are the hot new thing in generative AI. These lightweight models are often "distilled" from larger LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, but are tasked with interpreting data and autonomously taking action rather than generating content. These actions can be straightforward, like automatically transcribing a Zoom call, or multi-step -- think, having it plan an 8-course meal, shop for necessary ingredients on Instacart, then email invites to your guests. The market is already being saturated with AI agents from the various leading companies. Anthropic kicked off the agentic race in November when it debuted its Computer Use API, which enables Claude to emulate human mouse and keyboard actions to control the local computing system. Microsoft announced Copilot Actions the same month and began rolling the agents out to business and enterprise subscribers in January. Nvidia followed suit at CES 2025 when it revealed its new Nemotron family of LLMs, and OpenAI finally unveiled its AI agent, Operator, as a "research preview" just a few hours ago.

Perplexity launches an assistant for Android | TechCrunch

AI-powered search engine Perplexity has launched an "agent," of sorts, called Perplexity Assistant, which Perplexity says uses reasoning, search, and apps to help with daily tasks. Perplexity Assistant, which is available for Android devices as of Thursday in the Perplexity app, can take "multi-app actions," the company says, like hailing a ride or searching for a song. Because Perplexity's search engine powers it, Perplexity Assistant has access to the web. That allows the assistant to do things like remind you of an event by finding the right date and time and creating a calendar entry, Perplexity says. Perplexity Assistant is multimodal in the sense that it can use your phone's camera to answer questions about what's around you or on your screen. The assistant also maintains context from one action to another, letting you, for example, have Perplexity Assistant research restaurants in your area and reserve a table automatically, Perplexity says. We are excited to launch the Perplexity Assistant to all Android users. This marks the transition for Perplexity from an answer engine to a natively integrated assistant that can call other apps and perform basic tasks for you. Update or install Perplexity app on Play Store. pic.twitter.com/FSRDLtVWzB -- Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) January 23, 2025 Perplexity Assistant will initially be free for Perplexity users in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi. While this product sounds great in theory, Perplexity launched half-baked products in the past. For instance, our testing found that Perplexity's shopping feature, designed to let users place an order without going to a retailer's website, tended to be slow and error-prone. Srinivas noted in a post on X that some Perplexity Assistant actions "[might] not always work," but that Perplexity plans to "address [these issues] over the next few months." The launch of Perplexity Assistant comes just days after Perplexity rolled out Sonar, an API service that lets enterprises and developers build the company's generative AI search tools into their own applications and acquired a social media platform for professionals called Read.cv. Founded in 2022, Perplexity has reportedly raised over $500 million in capital from VCs and is said to be valued at $9 billion.

Perplexity AI assistant goes head-to-head with Google's Gemini

While AI Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude have established their place in the market as general-purpose tools - Perplexity has carved out a niche for one specific function: AI-powered search. While most tools have some capability to scour the internet for search results, Perplexity takes this process a little bit further, offering comprehensively sourced answers with a heavily research-focused functionality. As part of Perplexity's strategy to expand into a broader AI ecosystem - a new app entitled 'Perplexity Assistant' was released on the Google Play Store. The Assistant utilizes reasoning, search, and apps, to help with daily tasks ranging from simple questions to multi-app actions. Allowing users to, for example, book dinner, find a forgotten song, call an Uber, and more. Recently, at Samsung Unpacked, we saw Google Gemini's assistant on full display, boasting a range of similar-sounding capabilities. Most notable was the ability to 'chain together' tasks. For example, asking Gemini to search for restaurants near you, and to send that to a specific contact in a text message. Whether Perplexity's Assistant can match or exceed the capabilities of the larger players in the AI assistant market is yet to be seen. However, if it performs as promised, it undoubtedly has a chance to become a major player in the AI assistant arms race.

Perplexity Adds AI Assistant That Calls Other Apps and Performs Tasks | PYMNTS.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity AI has launched an assistant within its Android app. "This marks the transition for Perplexity from an answer engine to a natively integrated assistant that can call other apps and perform basic tasks for you," Perplexity Co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a Thursday (Jan. 23) post on X. The new Perplexity Assistant can help users with tasks like booking dinner, finding a forgotten song, calling a ride, drafting emails and setting reminders, Perplexity AI said in a series of posts on Threads. "Assistant uses reasoning, search and apps to help with daily tasks ranging from simple questions to multi-app actions," the company said in one post. In examples shared in other posts in the thread, the company said Perplexity Assistant can find the correct date and time of an event and set a reminder; help book a table after aiding the user's search for a restaurant; and identify what it sees through the device's camera or on screen. It was reported in December that Perplexity AI closed a $500 million funding round that tripled its valuation to $9 billion. In November, the company launched an AI-powered shopping assistant in the U.S. and said it will expand it to additional markets. Dubbed "Buy With Pro," the shopping assistant can help shoppers both research and buy products. Buy With Pro lets users check out on the company's website or app for select products from select merchants; enables one-click checkout when users save their shipping and billing information to Perplexity AI's portal and select Buy With Pro to place the order; and, if Buy With Pro is not available, directs users to the merchant's website to complete their purchase. "It marks a big leap forward in how we serve our users -- empowering seamless native actions right from an answer," Perplexity AI said at the time in a blog post. "Shopping online just got 10x more easy and fun." It was reported Saturday (Jan. 19) that Perplexity AI submitted a bid to TikTok's China-based parent ByteDance, seeking to merge with TikTok U.S. The proposed deal would let most of ByteDance's investors hold onto their equity stakes, while bringing more video to Perplexity.

Perplexity debuts AI assistant on Android to challenge Alexa, ChatGPT

(Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity launched an agent-based assistant for Android devices on Thursday as it looks to take on larger rival OpenAI's ChatGPT and incumbent assistants such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. The Nvidia and Jeff Bezos-backed company said the tool, known as Perplexity Assistant, can book dinner reservations, hail rides on apps and set reminders, among other actions. It is available in 15 languages on Google's Play Store. "We'd love to make it available on iOS, and if Apple gives us the right permissions, we'll make it happen," a spokesperson for Perplexity said. OpenAI rolled out a similar tool, called Tasks, to ChatGPT Team and Pro subscribers last week on the web platform. Tech giants Amazon and Apple have also been developing more advanced versions of their assistants. Last year, Apple incorporated Apple Intelligence into its voice assistant, Siri, and in a partnership with OpenAI, the iPhone maker also introduced the use of ChatGPT, with user permission. Meanwhile, Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said in December that a refreshed version of their voice assistant, Alexa, is on the horizon and expected to launch in the "coming months." (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)