Perplexity one-ups Gemini and ChatGPT with a fantastic AI freebie

What if you tell an AI chatbot to search the web, look up a certain kind of source, and then create a detailed report based on all the information it has gleaned? Well, Gemini can do it, for $20 a month. Or $200 each month, if you prefer ChatGPT.

Perplexity will do it for free. A few times each day, that is. Perplexity is calling its latest tool, Deep Research. Just like OpenAI. And Google Gemini before it.

So, what’s the fuss all about? Think of it as a research assistant, who takes the drudgery of looking up sources, taking notes, and then handing over a well-prepared report.

Performing a task like that takes a lot of computing power, and as a result, it is expensive. Perplexity will offer an unlimited number of Deep Research queries to its subscribers, but free users can enjoy “a limited number of answers per day.”

“It excels at a range of expert-level tasks—from finance and marketing to product research—and attains high benchmarks on Humanity’s Last Exam,” says the company. Deep Research by Perplexity is currently limited to the web, but will soon arrive on Android and iOS mobile apps, as well.

To launch a Deep Research query, users will have to select the namesake option from the model selection dropdown, right by the text field. Once the research work is over, users will be able to export it directly as a document or PDF file.

There’s also an option to convert it into an online Perplexity Page, which is shareable with anyone as a web link. In Gemini’s case, you can directly import it to Google Docs, as well.

The company claims Perplexity Deep Research is better than Google’s Gemini model with Thinking capabilities, OpenAI’s o3-mini and o1 models, and the buzzy new DeepSeek-R1 model. It only ranks below OpenAI Deep Research on the Humanity’s Last Exam benchmark.

I’ve extensively used Gemini Deep Research for looking through scientific papers and archives, and it does a fantastic job of pulling up the relevant information and simplifying it. It is also particularly effective at pulling up notices from government agencies and handles legal updates quite well.

OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, also confirmed a few days ago that the company will offer two Deep Research queries to free users per month. For those paying a $20 monthly fee for ChatGPT Plus, they will get 10 Deep Research shots each month.