Home Perplexity launches AI assistant on Android with smart reasoning

Perplexity launches AI assistant on Android with smart reasoning

AI search engine Perplexity has announced the launch of a new mobile assistant on Android. On Thursday (Jan. 23), the firm said that the assistant can handle tasks like writing emails, setting reminders, booking dinners, and more, all by using reasoning.

Perplexity has been considered a digital Swiss Army knife of sorts, using its multimodal abilities to be able to do multiple tasks at once.

Perplexity shared an example where a user simply asks the assistant to “get me a ride.” After finding out the destination, the assistant automatically opens Uber and shows the available rides to get there.

Thanks to Perplexity’s own search engine, the assistant can pull in real-time web information instead of just spitting out pre-programmed answers. In theory, this makes it smarter and more flexible than a lot of its competitors. It can also keep track of context across multiple tasks, so it won’t double-book your schedule and remembers your preferences—what you like and what you’d rather avoid.

The company’s CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote on X: “You can do many cool things like booking an Uber, finding dinner tables, playing an old YouTube video, playing songs, getting directions, and translating Shakespeare, all with voice and a simple action button or gesture.

“Cool thing about this is everything stays in context.”

Perplexity assistant isn’t quite perfect – yet

We tried it out for ourselves and found it to be fairly responsive. Asking it for a “local weather report,” it rightly pointed out that it was cloudy with heavy rain expected, bringing up a rather neat box with the current temperature.

A Perplexity app weather report interface showing the weather for Bootle, United Kingdom. The temperature is 46°F with partly cloudy conditions. It also displays a weekly forecast: Friday through Wednesday, with temperatures ranging from highs of 47°F to lows of 33°F and varied weather conditions including rain and clouds.
The Perplexity AI assistant for Android figured out where I was. Credit: Perplexity AI / ReadWrite

I also pointed my phone’s camera at my plate, and Perplexity’s assistant figured out I was having a tuna niçoise salad. It even gave me a rough estimate of the calories. While it wasn’t spot-on—off by about 60 calories—it was still pretty close. So, it still has a few teething problems in this iteration.

A Perplexity app interface identifying a meal as "The M&S Tuna Niçoise Salad," containing approximately 305 calories for a 310-gram serving. The display includes a microphone button and mentions 8 sources for the information.
The AI assistant was able to guess what I was eating. Credit: Perplexity AI / ReadWrite

Perplexity Assistant is starting off free for Perplexity users and will be available in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi.

Featured image: Perplexity AI

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Suswati Basu
Tech journalist

Suswati Basu is a multilingual, award-winning editor and the founder of the intersectional literature channel, How To Be Books. She was shortlisted for the Guardian Mary Stott Prize and longlisted for the Guardian International Development Journalism Award. With 18 years of experience in the media industry, Suswati has held significant roles such as head of audience and deputy editor for NationalWorld news, digital editor for Channel 4 News and ITV News. She has also contributed to the Guardian and received training at the BBC As an audience, trends, and SEO specialist, she has participated in panel events alongside Google. Her…

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