Perplexity launches assistant for Android

Perplexity search engine powered by artificial intelligence “agent,” one of a kind, is called Perplexity Assistant, and Perplexity says it uses reasoning, search, and apps to perform everyday tasks.

Perplexity Assistant, available for Android devices starting Thursday In the confusion applicationcan perform “multi-program actions,” the company says, like taking a walk or searching for a song.

Since Perplexity’s search engine powers it, Perplexity Assistant has access to the internet. Perplexity says this allows the assistant to do things like find the right date and time and remind you of an event by creating a calendar entry.

Perplexity Assistant is multimodal in that it can use your phone’s camera to answer questions around you or on your screen. Perplexity says the assistant also keeps context from one action to the next, for example, allowing Perplexity Assistant to research restaurants in your area and automatically reserve a table.

We are excited to introduce Perplexity Assistant to all Android users. This marks the transition from an answer engine for Confusion to a natively integrated helper that can call other programs and perform basic tasks for you. Update or install the Perplexity app on the Play Store. pic.twitter.com/FSRDLtVWzB

— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) January 23, 2025

Perplexity Assistant will initially be free to Perplexity users in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Hindi.

While this product sounds great in theory, Perplexity has released half-baked products in the past. For example, our trials found that Perplexity’s shopping feature, designed to allow users to order without visiting a retailer’s site, was slow and error-prone.

In a post on X, Srinivas noted that some Confusion Assistant actions “(may) not always work”, but Confusion plans to “fix (these issues) over the next few months”.

The launch of Perplexity Assistant comes just days after the release of Perplexity Sonaran API service that allows enterprises and developers to build the company’s generative AI search tools into their applications and has been obtained A social media platform for professionals called Read.cv.

There is Perplexity, set in 2022 reported It has raised more than $500 million in capital from VCs and is valued at $9 billion.