There, I said it.
Depending on how old you are, you might remember when Google came out. It was magical. In school, I remember just being with friends and Google searching random topics, or if you are feeling really daring, clicking "I'm feeling lucky". There were tips and tricks to become really good with searching too - for instance:
site:openai.com filetype:pdf "AI product specs" October 2022
Try Googling that - the results are fun. But that wonder has kind of disappeared now, years later. With how prevalent ads are, the once magical experience has turned into a constant bombardment of targeted marketing. And nobody wants to see an ad pop up for a silly question you ask.
That's why I love Perplexity. It brought back that childish mysticism of asking questions - especially for things you just want to learn more about without getting a ton of sponsored google ads. Imagine google searching:
"Explain to me what's this whole thing about Hawk Tuah?"
Silly questions aside, the way I've been using Perplexity is a mix between slice of life questions and more professional ones. For instance the other day I wanted to see how can I get a contact form endpoint from tally.so. Another day, a friend wanted to know what is the ideal temperature to be set in her specific fridge model, so we took a picture of it and asked.
When it comes to automations that we make at 4Fsh, whether for ourselves or our clients, the Perplexity API is incredibly useful when generating research about the topic. Separate from getting $5 free in API credits from subscribing to the pro service, it's the only AI service that really aggregates multiple sources well when you're asking a question.
So in our case, we run a prompt through the API and ask about a topic. We can take that research and break it up into JSON would then let us focus on each part for a different automation module.
For example, we made a tool that researches a lead when it comes in. On the high level:
- We would run a perplexity search on the lead and where they came from.
- It would send Sales a message, giving them a little more details than just a new lead notification would.
- Qualified leads would have a personalized cadence created based on where the lead came in, industry, and interests.
Of course, step 4 would be a manual check to make sure everything works out. Hallucinations are still a real thing, even though there are tricks to minimizing it. That goes without saying.
Perplexity has brought back the joy of discovery, making the search experience enjoyable and productive again.
Writing papers in college would have been so much easier if I didn't need to spend hours researching a topic.
Interested in using Perplexity? This is a referral code from us, it takes $10 off if you sign up.
