Perplexity AI recently announced the launch of its Deep Research tool, and it has been trending on the internet since. It is considered the direct competitor to the giants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
It is more than just an LLM. As its name suggests, it can help users with deep research and provide them with an expert-level analysis of the desired topic across all niches. We will look at some examples later in this article.
The main purpose of this incredible AI tool is to minimize the user’s time in conducting their research works and conduct analysis autonomously.
“Perplexity’s Deep Research tool can complete most of the tasks within three minutes, and thus it is comparatively faster than its competitors”, says Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity. He adds, “The tool can perform numerous searches and read hundreds of sources to get the information user wants and present it in a comprehensive report.”
Initially, the Perplexity Deep Research Agent has been available for free to all users with a paid option of $20/month that gives them access to expert-level research on almost all kinds of topics. The paid users can also avail themselves of 500 daily queries with a detailed report available to them in under three minutes.
Currently available only on the Perplexity website, the tool will soon be launched on iOS, Android, and Mac Versions of the app.
Unlike Google, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and xAI’s research tools that use their own LLMs, Perplexity uses a custom version of DeepSeek R1, the open-source model. This will allow programmers to customize this Deep Research Agent according to their own purpose. For example, Perplexity launched R1 1776, its own open-source version of R1, which is capable of producing uncensored, unbiased, and accurate information.
How Does Deep Research Agent Work?
Behind the working of Perplexity Deep Research lies a powerful proprietary framework called test time compute (TTC) expansion that makes the tool capable of systematic exploration of complex topics.
While traditional search engines retrieve static results, the TTC architecture is designed to mimic human cognitive processes by refining their understanding through analysis cycles.
Here’s how the tool works:
The Perplexity Deep Research Agent is equipped with both search and coding capabilities, which enables it to search, read documents, and analyze them to decide what to do next. Thus, it refines its research plan by learning more about the search topic.
After the tool has completely evaluated the source materials, it generates a report synthesizing all the research clearly and comprehensively.
Once the report is generated, users can export it in PDF or document or even convert it into a Perplexity Page to share it with colleagues and friends.
Deep Research Use Cases
Perplexity claims to have developed this research agent to empower everyone to conduct research and expert-level analysis for a wide range of topics. This Perplexity AI tool can generate work artifacts across various niches, including finance, marketing, technology, and more, and is said to be as capable as any other personal consultant in the field of health, product research, and travel planning.
The applications of this tool can be seen across all industries, such as:
Let's see some examples of its working in various industries:
Finance
Marketing
Technology
Current Affairs
Health
Humanity’s Last Exam
Humanity’s Last Exam is a rigorous assessment of LLMs and is a comprehensive benchmark for AI systems. It consists of over 3,000 questions about more than 100 subjects, including mathematics, science, history, and literature.
Perplexity Deep Research obtained 21.1% accuracy on this benchmark exam, which is much higher than Gemini Thinking, o3-mini, DeepSeek R1, and other competitors.
How can Perplexity Research Benefit Humanity?
The autonomous nature of the Deep Research Agent is a great feature of this AI tool and offers a wide range of benefits to users, apart from freeing their time searching through countless sources.
Here are some benefits of using Perplexity Deep Research:
This AI agent can greatly reduce the time required to conduct in-depth research so that users can focus on the analysis or application of the information.
Since this tool can explore a wide range of sources and look after the sub-questions systematically, it can find information that humans may miss through traditional searches.
As the agent can draw information from various sources, the chances are more that it produces accurate responses free from bias and offers a more balanced perspective to users.
Most importantly, the agent can make complex research easily accessible to everyone, even those who do not have enough expertise or resources to conduct in-depth research independently.
Conclusion
Perplexity's Deep Research Agent brings in a new world of how information is synthesized, a world where AI can help individuals delve deeper into a wide range of topics and gain insights like never before. Though challenges remain, such as ethical consideration, reliability and accuracy, and misinformation, its benefits can be huge in business operations as well as personal lives.
As we move towards the future and AI continues to achieve new heights, we should see this tool becoming more efficient and powerful in conducting research and transforming how we interact with information.
