We asked the people behind the AI search engine 'Perplexity' a variety of questions, including 'What kind of ads will they display?' and 'How will they develop in Japan?'
Perplexity is an AI search engine that launched in 2022. Simply enter natural sentences such as 'Tell me how to preserve chicken' or 'What is the best ramen to eat in Kyoto?' and it will search for information on the Internet and provide you with an answer. I had the opportunity to interview
Perplexity
https://www.perplexity.ai/
GIGAZINE (hereinafter, G):
When using Perplexity, in addition to Perplexity's own models, you can also choose models from other companies such as GPT-4o. How much effort are you putting into developing your own models?
Dmitry Shevelenko, CBO (hereinafter referred to as CBO Shevelenko):
The technology we are focusing on the most is 'orchestration (a mechanism for allocating tasks to multiple AIs).' Perplexity converts questions entered by users into a format the system can understand, passes them through a search index, sifts through information obtained from the web, and outputs the answers in easy-to-read text using a language model. In order to increase the accuracy of this operation, we are devoting most of our research and development to improving orchestration.
AI research and development is progressing rapidly, and the 'most powerful language model' is constantly changing. For this reason, we have made multiple language models available to choose from so that users can always use the most suitable language model.
G:
There is a ton of AI-generated content on the web. Are there plans to filter AI-generated content in Perplexity's search service?
CBO Sheverenko:
Perplexity uses a ranking algorithm to provide high-quality answers. This ranking algorithm also checks whether the content is AI-generated or not. However, not all AI-generated content is low quality, so we check the content of the generated content to determine whether it is trustworthy information and then filter it out.
G:
Is the ranking algorithm developed by Perplexity?
CBO Sheverenko:
Yes, it is an algorithm that we developed ourselves.
G:
Is the ranking algorithm optimized for each language, such as English or Japanese?
CBO Sheverenko:
Yes, we try to accommodate language-specific factors, for example, if you ask a question in Japanese, we'll try to answer using Japanese sources.
G:
Japanese users do not always want answers in Japanese, but sometimes they want information in languages other than Japanese, such as 'I'd like to gather information from English-speaking countries.' Can you handle situations where users want information in a language other than their own?
CBO Sheverenko:
That's right. It's not fixed in a way that 'only Japanese will be returned,' but rather it is designed to return results that are highly relevant to the question.
G:
I see. Perplexity announced
CBO Sheverenko:
Our first meeting with SoftBank was at the technology trade fair ' MWC Barcelona 2024 ' held in Barcelona in February 2024. We then signed a partnership agreement in April 2024 and began our partnership in June. Things moved along pretty quickly.
G:
What kind of expansion do you have planned for Japan in the future?
CBO Sheverenko:
In Japan, we are currently running a free campaign for Perplexity Pro for SoftBank users, and hope to use this as a foothold to increase the number of mobile users and raise awareness. In addition to our partnership with SoftBank, we would like to make smart workers aware of Perplexity Pro as a service that can be used both for work and for personal use.
G:
In preparation for expansion into Japan, have you set up a team to serve the Japanese market?
CBO Sheverenko:
Yes. We have already hired Japanese support team members to answer user questions, and we are also planning to hire an enterprise support team.
G:
There is a Japanese version of the Perplexity FAQ page , but the translation quality is poor and it is difficult to read, with the English and katakana spellings of Perplexity mixed together, and 'Perplexity' being directly translated as 'confusion.' Are there any plans to focus on improving the quality of the Japanese documentation? Also, is the multilingualization of documentation done manually or by AI?
CBO Sheverenko:
As you know, we are still a new company, and Perplexity has only been running for 18 months. We have grown very quickly in such a short time. Of course, we would like to focus on localization. Localization work should be done by humans. Maybe the quality is poor because we rushed the work.
G:
What is the current percentage of Japanese users out of all users?
CBO Sheverenko:
Japanese users are the fourth most common group, and the number of Japanese users has increased six-fold in the past four months.
G:
Can you tell us what scale of servers you have in place to run Perplexity's systems and AI models?
CBO Sheverenko:
That question has been asked about 200 million times. (Laughs) We use AWS and have a contract that allows us to reserve the capacity we need in real time, at any time.
G:
How many employees are there at Perplexity and what are their roles?
CBO Sheverenko:
We have less than 100 employees. Most of us are engineers and designers. Some of us are in charge of business development and marketing. Our immediate goal is to improve the performance of Perplexity.
G:
Does Perplexity plan to go public?
CBO Sheverenko:
There is a possibility.
G:
AI-specialized chips are now being installed in smartphones and laptops. Are you considering 'offline Perplexity' that uses these AI-specialized chips?
CBO Sheverenko:
We are not considering 'Perplexity that works offline.' Perplexity's strength is that it collects and responds to information on the web in real time. It is difficult to imagine a system that uses only information on smartphones and laptops as a source.
G:
As a technology news site, we would like to ask: What OS does the CBO use on his smartphone? Android or iOS?
CBO Sheverenko:
I use an iPhone. The design is beautiful.
G:
In relation to the 'beautiful design,' were there any other services that you used as reference when designing the Perplexity UI? I think it's similar to ChatGPT's UI.
CBO Sheverenko:
We were the first company to release a service that combined search and language models, so I think other services have copied Perplexity's UI.
There are many beautiful and highly refined products in the world, so we take inspiration from them when designing our UI.
G:
Does Perplexity collect information about which web pages users visit?
CBO Sheverenko:
Not collected.
G:
What is Perplexity's primary source of income?
CBO Sheverenko:
Perplexity Pro subscription fee.
G:
Do you have plans to increase your sources of income in the future?
CBO Sheverenko:
The company has launched a subscription plan for enterprises and has already signed 1,500 contracts. It also plans to launch an advertising business in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2024. It also plans to expand its advertising business in Japan.
G:
What are Perplexity's strengths that appeal to advertisers?
CBO Sheverenko:
Perplexity users often use Perplexity while thinking about 'buying something.' We believe this is an appealing point for advertisers.
G:
Can you be more specific about ads? Does this mean Perplexity will include ads in its results?
CBO Sheverenko:
We will not include ads in the answers themselves. At Perplexity, we display a screen below the answers that says 'Recommended questions for next time,' and we plan to include ads in this list of related questions. We will add a label to the ads to make it clear that they are ads.
G:
Next, let me ask a question that is unrelated to Perplexity's products. In AI, there is a problem with 'hallucination,' which treats inaccurate information as if it were accurate information, but I think this hallucination is close to human 'creativity.' Please tell me what CBO Sheverenko thinks about hallucination.
CBO Sheverenko:
Our design philosophy considers AI to be a source of knowledge for humans to gather together. AI can do something by combining information that already exists, but it cannot create something.
G:
So, last question: what are Perplexity's ultimate ambitions?
CBO Sheverenko:
Our ambition is to expand the curiosity of people all over the world without limit. We want to create a world where users can explore and expand their exploration.
G:
I see. Thank you for today.
CBO Sheverenko:
thank you very much.
◆ Forum is currently open
A forum related to this article has been set up on the official GIGAZINE Discord server . Anyone can post freely, so please feel free to comment! If you do not have a Discord account, please refer to the account creation procedure article to create an account!
• Discord | 'Do you use the AI search engine 'Perplexity'? When is it useful?' | GIGAZINE
https://discord.com/channels/1037961069903216680/1284082904388861952
Related Posts:
in Interview, Web Service, Posted by log1o_hf