Iām excited about a few aspects of generative tech, but these search replacements might kill media, journalism, and the Internet as we know it:
Be thoughtful about how you use them.
Iām on the Perplexity bandwagon for sure.
I found Perplexity to screw up in basic facts. Like āhow many grand slams has Djokovic wonā. It was giving facts from 2-3 years ago although they say itās real time. This was last month. These facts are on the top of the google search results - in the āone boxā feature.
I asked it for reviews of a tv show I was watching, while I was watching it, and it gave me a weird answer, saying it was confused because some sources said the show hadnāt shown yet and others said it has.
It seems pretty good otherwise, and it will surely improve over time, as these things tend to do.
for real time searches, I definitely prefer gemini, since they already have the data. Otherwise ChatGPT. I really wish for gemini to get better so we can see generated content and google search on the same page.
But both of those have dramatically higher rates of hallucination over Perplexity; plus they do not give you details of sources as Perplexity does. Thus they are basically useless for searching for non-fiction information.
Perplexity and Consensus are the only shows in town presently if you are searching for non-fiction info.
Not sure when you asked Perplexity the question, but I just checked. Here is itās answer, which seems to be correct
Novak Djokovic has won a record 24 Grand Slam singles titles.He achieved this historic feat by winning the 2023 US Open, where he defeated Daniil Medvedev in the final. This tied him with Margaret Court for the most Grand Slam singles titles in tennis history.Some key details about Djokovicās 24 Grand Slam titles:
- Australian Open: 10 titles (2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023)
- French Open: 3 titles (2016, 2021, 2023)
- Wimbledon: 7 titles (2011, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 runner-up)
- US Open: 4 titles (2011, 2015, 2018, 2023)
He is the only man in the Open Era to achieve a āDouble Career Grand Slamā by winning each major at least twice.Djokovic also holds the record for most Grand Slam finals reached with 36.
Can you show an example of that? That is extremely unusual for Perplexity.
I mean I didnāt save a screenshot of that, it was a month ago, I just closed it and went ahead and searched google lol.
@Nick_Fulgham probably a newer model was deployed? I donāt know 
@rkaplan Iāve been using googleās new AI overview feature that shows up in place of one box and it does show sources. I enabled it via labs.google.
I found lots of factual errors when I was trying perplexity on something I was already researching. The initial responses were often impressive, but when I asked follow-ups it became muddled (confusing different models and timelines) and started to create non-existent facts and citations.
In case you havenāt seen it, Adam Engst on Tidbits:
The sources are not footnoted. They information in those sources may not even match what is in the AI Overview summary. They are not necessarily connected in any way.
If you are just looking up where to go to dinner then search wherever you want. If you are looking up stuff where facts matter than use Perplexity or Consensus. Simply no question about it.
Had a brief look but a couple of things put me off it. First their data privacy policy is not clear. Second, and more importantly, they want users to login with an ID from somewhere else Google and Apple.
If you are looking for Facts then you canāt trust any AI right now, thatās the nature of how GPTs + RL works. And if you have to look at the source, then thereās no point of the generated version perplexity gives us, itās equivalent to surfacing a link - which is search. But things might get better over time and we might be able to trust these things.
Iām still bullish on Google. Googleās mistakes are of course made a lot bigger considering its scale. They are experimentingā¦
Iām good with all that. Some things need to die.
I just subscribed to Perplexity Pro after reading this thread. Itās helpful to add a Popclip action for Perplexity. It is available here (written by ārkaplanā).
The link that Perplexity gives you is a whole lot more likely to be helpful than if you use a regular Google search or any other form of AI. Thus it is notably helpful.
Heads up WIRED looked into Perplexity and it is awful: Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine | WIRED
These stories and others like them confirm that Appleās approach, though not perfect, is better than other options.