The move comes as Perplexity faces increased competition from OpenAI's similar SearchGPT feature and legal issues over alleged data scraping practices. The company has received cease-and-desist letters from The New York Times and Conde Nast. If advertisers are deterred by these issues, Perplexity's sole income source may remain its $20/month Perplexity Pro subscription.
Key takeaways:
- Perplexity AI announced that it will begin experimenting with inserting advertisements into its chatbot responses starting next week, in the form of “sponsored follow-up questions and paid media positioned to the side of an answer.”
- The startup assures that all sponsored answers will be clearly labeled and the answers will still be generated by its model, not written or edited by the partner companies themselves.
- Perplexity is facing increased competition from OpenAI's similar SearchGPT feature, as well as multiple lawsuits over allegations of data scraping practices amounting to copyright infringement.
- ChatGPT is receiving its second new search feature of the week, ChatGPT Search, which will deliver real-time data from the internet in response to chat prompts, posing competition to both Perplexity and Google.