Perplexity AI is a tool that uses GPT-3.5 Generative Ai and GPT-4 technology to deliver a highly tailored search experience, similar to an interactive AI search buddy. It provides a free basic version as well as a more powerful version known as Copilot, which requires a membership and is powered by GPT-4.
GPT-4, on the other hand, is a language model created by OpenAI that is noted for its amazing skills in interpreting and creating human-like prose depending on input. It is the successor of GPT-3 and is thought to be more advanced in terms of comprehension and creative capabilities.
Why is Perplexity Ai unique?
Here are a few reasons why we picked Perplexity Ai:
- It is very fast at output generation (faster than Chat GPT 3.5)
- It has access to the internet and can browse in real-time to provide you anything from the net, and you can count on it being up to date
- Easy to use because the interface is very similar to Chat GPT
- Quick to setup and log in
- Has both a Free and Paid versions that are really good and offer a wide range of interesting features
How Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners can leverage Perplexity Ai Tool
Here is a table of functions that Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners can leverage Perplexity AI for, grouped by type of task:
| Task Type | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Business Task | – Market research: Perplexity AI can provide comprehensive and accurate answers to questions related to market trends, competitors, and consumer preferences. | A small business owner can use Perplexity AI to research the market trends and consumer preferences for a new product they are planning to launch. |
| Business Task | – Financial analysis: Perplexity AI can analyze financial data and extract insights useful for financial decision-making. | An entrepreneur can use Perplexity AI to analyze financial data and extract insights to make informed decisions about investments and budgeting. |
| Marketing Task | – Content creation: Perplexity AI can generate draft content based on specific inputs, saving time and effort in the initial stages of content development. | A small business owner can use Perplexity AI to generate draft content for social media posts or blog articles. |
| Research Task | – Sentiment Analysis: Perplexity Ai can help you analyze the sentiment over a particular trend/person or any phenomena. | You can run a sentiment analysis to test the prevailing attitude toward a certain product packaging, before ever putting the production in motion. |
| Marketing Task | – SEO optimization: Perplexity AI can act as a content assistant for SEO professionals, providing insights and suggestions for keyword optimization. | An entrepreneur can use Perplexity AI to optimize their website content for search engines and improve their online visibility. |
| Operational Task | – Customer support: Perplexity AI can optimize language models to provide accurate and helpful responses to customer queries in various industries. | Small business owners can use Perplexity AI to optimize their customer support system and provide quick and accurate responses to customer queries. |
| Operational Task | – Text classification: Perplexity AI can classify and categorize text data, helping you organize and analyze marketing content more efficiently. | An entrepreneur can use Perplexity AI to classify and categorize customer feedback and social media posts to better understand customer opinions and preferences. |
Arguably, the use case of Perplexity Ai is very similar to Chat GPT. The difference, though, is that Perplexity (free version) provides access to the internet, and allows you to upload and process various files (books, pdfs, etc.).
How to install Perplexity Ai
The easiest way is using your Google account:
Use the following link:
As soon as you’re signed in, you will be led to the main dashboard, where you can prompt the engine:
A real example of how Perplexity Ai can help you do market research
Let’s say you want to purchase a tool for video editing, but you’re not an expert so you want to do some research first. Here’s how you can use Perplexity Ai to do this research:
Begin by generating a simple prompt, such as the following:
Hit the Pro Search to activate GPT-4 for better results:
Perplexity AI (with CoPilot) then asks you a few specific questions to finetune the output to match your intention. Then it heads off to browse the net and shows you the sources it used:
Then it provides the answer:
Along with the PROS and CONS:
You can also see the sources for each of the PROS and CONS, in case you wanted to dive deeper into any of these or check the source to get more info.
Perplexity Ai Features
Here are the key features that make Perplexity Ai so unique and recommendable to Entrepreneurs and Small business owners.
1. Focus – choose the output type
The Focus feature helps you choose the output characteristics, based on what you are working on.
For example, if you’re interested in academic papers and materials, you can specify that. If you’re looking for stats, scientific research, mathematical operations, and more technical material, then use Wolfram Alpha (which also exists as a plugin for Chat GPT-4). Or maybe you are looking for a forum discussion online on a topic you’re interested in, well, choose Reddit. Similarly, you may want just video materials to be processed, for which YouTube is a great option.
Alternatively, instead of focusing, you may tick the ALL option to browse the whole net.
2. CoPilot
The Copilot function in Perplexity AI serves as an interactive and personalized search assistant, significantly enhancing the user’s search experience. Here’s a detailed breakdown of its functionalities and the technology it leverages:
- Interactive and Personalized Search:
- Copilot is designed to provide interactive and personalized search results by understanding the user’s query better and providing more accurate answers.
- It goes beyond the initial query and acts like an inquisitive colleague, aiming to get things just right for the user.
- Engagement with Users:
- The feature can ask follow-up questions, run multiple searches, and summarize the results for the user, ensuring that the information provided is aligned with the user’s needs and preferences.
- The feature can ask follow-up questions, run multiple searches, and summarize the results for the user, ensuring that the information provided is aligned with the user’s needs and preferences.
- Guided Search Experience:
- Copilot acts as an interactive AI search companion, guiding the user’s search experience to ensure they find the information they’re seeking.
- Copilot acts as an interactive AI search companion, guiding the user’s search experience to ensure they find the information they’re seeking.
- Technology:
- It utilizes the GPT-4 technology to power its interactive and personalized search functionalities, making it an advanced tool for information retrieval and interaction.
3. Upload PDF and Word Files to process and interact with
By using the ‘upload file’ feature you’re able to upload any document, PDF file, book, or Word doc to Perplexity Ai. This artificial intelligence tool then processes all the information from the book so you can interact with it easily and quickly.
It can help you in the following ways:
- Summarize content
- Answer questions based on the content
- Merge file interaction with information from the internet (in case you want to cross-check)
- Use suggested questions from the prompt engine
4. Sources and References
As seen from the example above, Perplexity Ai provides sources and references which help a lot when we need to verify information or dig for more relevant data on our own.
This makes it really easy to build trust with the tool as it reveals what went into the baking of the content output.
Should I use Perplexity instead of Chat GPT?
Don’t replace Chat GPT with Perplexity Ai. While Perplexity uses Chat GPT (3.5 and 4.0), it provides different responses and browses the net differently.
We ran an experiment using Perplexity Ai (with CoPilot – powered by Chat GPT 4) against Chat GPT 4 (with Bing browsing option).
The Prompt was: list top 5 ai tools for video editing. Create a table and evaluate them across the most important metrics for video editing.
The results from Chat GPT (Bing browsing):
The results from Perplexity Ai (with Chat GPT 4 engine):
As you can see the output is totally different. This is the reason why you should use both. Or use just one, but then do some extra research on your own as you will see there will be many tools that you could miss.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot rely on the verity of the answers. Keep in mind that there are many affiliate websites, paid content, and self-promotional pages that can deceive the reader (whether a bot or a human being).
In addition, you may want to consider choosing a single focus for your source of information. In this case, you could use only YouTube to get all the information from YouTubers who have tried a few tools and are reviewing them on their channel.
