Latest news with #JesseDwyer
News18
3 hours ago
- Business
- News18
Airtel's Free AI Offer With Perplexity Faces Downgrade Charges: What The Company Said
Last Updated: Airtel AI offer promises features worth Rs 17,000 from the Perplexity Pro version but it seems people are not sure if they get it Perplexity AI offer in India with Airtel plan has faced new charges which accuse the company of delivering Pro-Lite version of its premium plan to these subscribers. The Airtel AI offer is claimed to bring features worth Rs 17,000 with its one year plan but a recent post on Reddit said the performance of the supposed free AI offer was less than satisfactory. These charges clearly did not go down well with Perplexity who has reportedly denied these claims and promises that the free AI offer comes with all the premium features. Perplexity AI Airtel Offer: What The Company Said Jesse Dwyer from the company was quoted saying this in a report, 'It is absolutely false that Airtel customers get a different version of Perplexity Pro than our Pro subscribers. India is very dear to us as a company and we would hope to correct this misunderstanding for Indian readers." The quote in the Financial Express also cited concerns like misinformation about the company and how people are supposedly using it for their own engagement. The statement was more or less warranted after the post said the free AI offer for Airtel users did not deliver on the full Perplexity AI package. The post claimed the Perplexity Pro version linked to Airtel numbers were slow, not citing sources and the answers were less than impressive. Perplexity Pro is a premium AI tier like ChatGPT Plus and Gemini AI Pro, offering a host of features and access to AI models like Claude and others. Airtel Perplexity Pro Offer: Features Worth Rs 17,000 For Free The Perplexity Pro offer is claimed to give you features worth Rs 17,000 for free, these are: Airtel says the offer can be redeemed only between July 17, 2025 and January 17, 2026 after which the free deal will not be available to its customers. Existing Perplexity Pro subscribers can also avail this offer. view comments Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
India Today
3 days ago
- Business
- India Today
Perplexity-powered Truth Social AI may limit info sources, giving Donald Trump control over what you see
Truth Social, the social media platform backed by US President Donald Trump, has rolled out an artificial intelligence-powered search engine that may give it significant influence over what information its users see. The new tool, called Truth Search AI, is powered by technology from San Francisco-based AI start-up Perplexity. It is currently available on Truth Social's web platform, with public beta testing for iOS and Android apps expected 'in the near future'.advertisementTrump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) says the AI will provide 'direct, contextually accurate answers with transparent citations' to boost the amount of information on the platform. But it also confirmed that the company controls which sources the AI can pull from, meaning search results could be shaped by its editorial Search AI uses Perplexity's Sonar API, which can retrieve real-time information from across the internet, even from sites that block Perplexity's crawlers. However, Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer told *TechCrunch* that the AI will only be as broad or narrow as Truth Social allows. 'We have no visibility or control over that,' he said. 'It's similar to using the API inside your own company or to search your own data.' Testing by Axios suggests the search engine often leans heavily on right-leaning media. When asked questions such as 'What happened on January 6, 2021?' and 'Why was Donald Trump impeached?', the most common or sole sources cited were The Washington Times, and The Epoch Times. By contrast, Perplexity's public search engine typically references a wider variety of outlets, including Wikipedia, NPR, Politico, and chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko added that the system's citations allow users to 'dig deeper' into any launch comes as Trump pushes for 'ideologically neutral' AI. In July, he signed an executive order targeting what he called 'biased AI', singling out concepts like systemic racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as 'pervasive and destructive' ideologies that could distort partnership between Truth Social and Perplexity arrives amid a broader move by tech companies to integrate AI into social platforms, similar to Elon Musk's Grok chatbot on X and Meta's AI assistant on Instagram and WhatsApp. It also comes during heightened scrutiny of AI's role in information control. While some tests of Truth Search AI have shown critical responses to Trump-era policies, the platform's ability to narrow its sources raises questions about whether the technology could be used to shape political narratives.- EndsTune InMust Watch
Tom's Guide
3 days ago
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Perplexity quietly rolls out AI video generation — here's everything you need to know
Video generation via AI tools has gone from a unique feature to an expectation at rapid speeds. Now, the vast majority of AI chatbots and image generators are offering it, and one of the biggest names in AI has followed closely behind. Perplexity, the AI browsing tool, has announced that it will be bringing AI video generation to its platform. It first trialed this via its page on X, asking users to send in their requests for the company to complete. Now, it's rolling out exclusively for subscribers to Perplexity Pro (the company's $20 a month plan) or those on the Max subscription. This can be seen when you go to the Perplexity upgrade page. Under Pro, you get limited access to video generation, with Max, it goes up to unlimited access. 'We'll launch video generation inside Perplexity. That is something that we see as something that consumers really want. It's also something that other model makers already provide,' Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's head of communications, told Tom's Guide. 'Our core reason for providing it is based on taking what users want and looking at it from our point of view. Users don't just want video generation in a vacuum. For most users, video is one of many outputs that they want.' We'll launch video generation inside Perplexity. That is something that we see as something that consumers really want. Dwyer went on to explain that he sees video in Perplexity working in conjunction with other tasks. Someone might want video as part of a report they are researching via Perplexity, or if they want to visualize an idea. Not just for the fun of creating videos. Unlike chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini or even one of the many standalone video generators that exist out there, Perplexity is marketed as an AI search engine. They operate closer to Google than they do most of their AI competitors. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Video generation is being slowly rolled out, and although Perplexity hasn't officially announced the feature yet, Dwyer explained that it is already available to Pro and Max users in a variety of regions. Perplexity already lets you generate images, quietly unveiling the feature back in April. Unlike its competitors, generation doesn't seem to be a huge part of the Perplexity package. The tool is built directly into the Perplexity model. You can use it in the same way as Perplexity's image generation, or most other video generators. Simply go into Perplexity when signed into your Pro or Max account, and make a video request query. For example 'Generate a video of a dog surfing on a giant wave'. There is no special setting you need to put on or feature that needs to be activated. However, as this feature is only in the early stages, it might not be available where you are yet. Try it out yourself and see what happens!
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Truth Social's AI search is powered by Perplexity, but the platform can set limits on sources
AI startup Perplexity is powering a new AI-powered search engine on Truth Social, President Donald Trump's social media platform. The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on its iOS and Android apps planned for 'the near future.' Trump Media said in a press release that Perplexity's tech provides 'direct, contextually accurate answers with transparent citations' which will help Truth Social 'exponentially increase the amount of information available' to users. Nonetheless, the social media platform maintains control over which sources of information the AI search engine draws from. Truth Social is using the Perplexity Sonar API, which promises to query the web to retrieve current and verified information – even if that information is scraped from websites that block Perplexity's crawlers – and supports structured output so users can define the format in which they'd like to see the search engine's responses. Jesse Dwyer, a Perplexity spokesperson, told TechCrunch that the Sonar API will be accurate to whatever sources Truth Social limits it to. 'We have no visibility or control over that,' Dwyer said. 'Similar to you using the API inside of your own company or if you were an academic researcher and wanted to use it to search your own data.' TechCrunch has reached out to Trump Media to learn more about whether Truth Search AI will have access to the entire web, whether it will prioritize certain sources over others, and whether the AI will be directed to respond favorably about the president and current administration and unfavorably towards Democrats. To assess which sources the searchbot would cite, Axios asked it a bunch of questions — like 'What happened on January 6, 2021? and 'Why was Donald Trump impeached?' In all the responses, was either the most common or the only listed source of information. Others included The Washington Times or Epoch Times, per Axios. In contrast, Perplexity's public search engine returns a wider variety of sources, including Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, NPR, and Politico. Truth Social plans to refine and expand the search function 'based on user feedback as we implement a wide range of additional enhancements to the platform,' said Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media and a former California congressman, in the statement. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity's chief business officer, also noted in the statement that Perplexity's AI delivers answers with 'transparent citations that allow anyone to dig deeper.' In late July, alongside his AI Action Plan, Trump published an executive order targeting 'biased AI,' or models that aren't 'ideologically neutral.' The order specifically referred to information about race or sex, unconscious bias, systemic racism and other ideas thrown into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bucket as 'pervasive and destructive' ideology that can 'distort the quality and accuracy of the output.' Truth Search AI comes in the same week that top AI firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google were added to a list of approved vendors that can sell their services to civilian federal agencies. OpenAI on Wednesday reached a deal with the U.S. government's central purchasing arm to sell ChatGPT Enterprise to agencies for just $1 per year. Sign in to access your portfolio
Tom's Guide
6 days ago
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Perplexity accused of scraping websites even when told not to — here's their response
Perplexity is riding high in the AI world right now. After launching the company's Comet browser, leading the way in agentic browsing, they've ran into some controversy. Cloudflare, in an online blog, published research that showed Perplexity has been crawling and scraping content from websites that explicitly stated they don't want to be scraped. The research accuses Perplexity of obscuring its identity when trying to scrape web pages, stating that they had received complaints from customers who had both disallowed Perplexity from analysing their files and created rules to specifically block Perplexity from doing this. Cloudflare performed its own tests to confirm this, creating brand new domains and then querying Perplexity with questions about these specific domains. Perplexity was able to answer queries on these pages, even though Cloudflare had stated it didn't want these websites to be analyzed. How Perplexity is able to get around these rules is complicated. It appears that Perplexity is changing its bots 'user agent'. In other words, it is pretending to not be a large AI model but just a normal visitor. Perplexity and lots of other AI tools require large amounts of information to work. They analyse the internet, looking at forums, web pages, and other online sources of information to work. However, there is more and more backlash to this approach and an expectation for transparency from AI companies on how they gather data. Some of Perplexity's competitors, like Claude and ChatGPT are offering ways to opt out of data gathering, and it is likely we'll see more rules as time goes on. How Perplexity is able to get around these rules is complicated. It appears that Perplexity is changing its bots 'user agent'. In other words, it is pretending to not be a large AI model but just a normal visitor. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. 'This activity was observed across tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests per day. We were able to fingerprint this crawler using a combination of machine learning and network signals,' says Cloudflare's post. Jesse Dwyer, a spokesperson for Perplexity, accused Cloudflare's blog of being a sales pitch for the company in an email to TechCrunch on the subject. She went on to say that the screenshots in the blog 'show that no content was accessed' and that the bot named in the Cloudflare blog 'isn't even ours'. Cloudflare is now taking a strong stance on AI crawlers, including Perplexity. The company has claimed that AI is breaking the business model of the internet and wants to help fight back. While Perplexity has denied this incident, the company has been in hot water before for similar problems, being accused of stealing news sites' content and struggling to define plagiarism.
