Perplexity AI

According to Guru (2025), Perplexity AI offers the following features as part of its chatbot service:

• providing sources and citations;

• "multimodal search" (e.g., uploading images);

• updated searches in real time;

• voice assistance (on Apple devices);

• tools for academic research (e.g., literature review, summaries);

• saving conversations in a well-organized and visually appealing PDF.

Perplexity AI also has media generation capabilities, although this is limited to images only as of 2025.

Perhaps an important selling point in terms of usability and functionality, Perplexity AI's interface is both minimalistic and highly interactive, providing follow-up questions and suggestions, as well as related topics and ideas that will be extremely useful to students looking for creative ways of tackling their activities.

CommonSense Education (n.d.) ranks this service three out of five stars, arguing that while a "powerful replacement for traditional search engines," it does not provide tools for teachers or scaffolding for students. Regardless, it is commended for its potential for research and the easy exploration of content it allows.

Indeed, Perplexity AI is praised for blending "AI and  real-time web search into one seamless, research-driven platform that saves time and improves the quality of information" (Kentz, 2025). Although the similarities between this service and ChatGPT/Gemini are noted, Perplexity AI is rated higher in terms of factual information and sourcing.

Despite the fact that Internet Matters (n. d.) points out some common problems associated with most chatbots (i.e., misinformation, flaws in data security, and overreliance), it also mentions advantages for young students, such as "[learning] how to structure their writing . . . [citing] and [sourcing] their writing; [getting] support with revision and brainstorming" and "[developing] skills around critical thinking and problem-solving."