Perplexity joins the "deep research" gang
Earlier this month, Perplexity released their answer to the "deep research" wave of AI products, thanks to the release of DeepSeek R1's open source model.
If you aren't already familiar, "deep research" has become the term for an AI powered research tool where you provide the AI with a brief on something you want researched (think: competition analysis, market analysis, etc) and the AI will go away for 2-15 minutes, research many sources at once and provide a summarised research report.
Google were the first to release this late last year (2024), but now many of the big players have released their version of "deep research".
Other "deep research" offerings out there are:
- Google Gemini's Deep Research
- ChatGPT's Deep Research (currently for USD $200/month users)
- Grok 3's "Deep Search" (currently for USD $30/month users)
- DeepSeek's R1
Key info on Perplexity's Deep Research
- Available for free users for a limited number of searches per day
- Pro users get unlimited searches
- It's powered by DeepSeek's R1 open source model (this means it's hosted and run in the USA, no data is run or sent to China)
- At first glance it seems like a higher level, simpler Deep Research tool out of the competitors which also makes sense as it seems to be one of the faster ones as well
My 2 cents on Perplexity's Deep Research
It's about time! I'm stoked that Perplexity have released their version of Deep Research. Perplexity has fast become by default search replacing Google for many use cases. It only makes sense that they are one of the companies driving this Deep Research wave.
Overall it works well and it's one of the more generous offerings by giving free users access to a limited number of searches per day. Something most of the other AI products don't offer as they keep their Deep Research features behind paywalls.
Perplexity will continue to be one of the first tools I open when I need to search anything.