Perplexity’s ‘Pro Search’ AI upgrade makes it better at math and research

Perplexity has launched a major upgrade to its Pro Search AI tool, which it says “understands when a question requires planning, works through goals step-by-step, and synthesizes in-depth answers with greater efficiency.”

Examples on Perplexity’s website of what Pro Search can do include a query asking the best time to see the northern lights in Iceland or Finland. It breaks down its research process into three searches: the best times to see the northern lights in Iceland and Finland; the top viewing locations in Iceland; and the top viewing locations in Finland. It then provides a detailed answer addressing all aspects of the question, including when to view the northern lights in either country and where.

Perplexity’s AI search tool can also generate a detailed report based on a prompt with a feature called Pages. But recent reports from Wired and Forbes have accused Perplexity of committing plagiarism, with a report from Wired calling the self-proclaimed “answer engine” a “Bullshit Machine,” with animations that misrepresent what it’s doing and data scrapers that bypass rules in robots.txt files.

Aside from conducting more thorough research, Perplexity says Search Pro now comes with more advanced math and programming capabilities that improve its ability to analyze data, debug code, and generate content. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can get five searches per day with a free account. Perplexity also offers 600 Pro searches per day with its $20 per month subscription.