Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine

WIRED's investigation concludes that Perplexity, an AI startup that Forbes has accused of copying its content, scrapes websites that have blocked its crawler and produces some inaccurate summaries. WIRED and developer Robb Knight found that an unpublicized IP address linked to Perplexity hit Condé Nast properties at least 822 times in three months, even though Perplexity says it respects the Robots Exclusion Protocol. In one test, the chatbot falsely claimed WIRED reported that a California police officer had committed a crime. CEO Aravind Srinivas called the questions a "deep and fundamental misunderstanding" but did not dispute the specifics of the reporting.