00:00Here's a non-nonsense guide to using Perplexity

00:01First up, while many of you are familiar with Chat GPT and Google Gemini, you might not know where Perplexity fits in your AI toolkit

00:10Imagine a spectrum; on one end, we have tools like Chat GPT and Gemini designed for high brain power creative tasks

00:14On the other end are tools like Perplexity and Google Search, which excel at delivering accurate and real-time information

00:22And of course, we can't forget all the way to the right, in a league of its own, we have the internet's undisputed single source of truth, Reddit

00:31Put simply, for tasks like brainstorming, editing, and Writing where you don't care about factual accuracy, Chat GPT and Gemini definitely deliver better outputs, but if you need a relatively high level of confidence in your answer, like deciding which supplements to take or troubleshooting software issues, Perplexity is the way to go

00:51Diving right into the settings, I really like how Perplexity lets us exclude our data from their training process, while still allowing us to access a conversation history under the library tab

01:01I'll talk about the pro features at the very end, since this video is mainly on the free version, but first I need to debunk a myth

01:09Creators are saying buying the pro version of Perplexity does not give you access to other paid AI tools like ChatGBT, even if you can select their models here

01:19This is because, even if they use the same underlying model, ChatGBT and Perplexity apply completely different fine-tuning methods

01:26For example, Perplexity optimizes for accuracy, speed, and a more search-oriented approach

01:31If you don't know what fine-tuning means, check out my video summarizing Google's intro to AI course, but the bottom line here is, even if you can select the same models, you do not get the same experience as the other AI tools next

01:47Moving on to the profile tab, this self-introduction section works just like Chatab BT's custom instructions, as in the instructions you add here apply to all conversations within Perplexity

01:57For example, let my instruction include: structure your writing and respond like a consultant, adopt a conversational tone, use simple language, etc

02:05And since we only need to add this once to benefit forever, I highly recommend customizing this to fit your needs

02:13If you're feeling a bit lazy, I'll leave a link down below to my custom instructions, and I'll also leave a link to my workspace toolkit if you want to make a Copy of my favorite prompts for productivity

02:23Now, let's actually start using Perplexity by going back to the Home tab, where you'll see the focus feature

02:30This basically lets you narrow down the sources you want Perplexity to use, which can drastically improve the quality of your output

02:37For example, if I'm searching for realtime news, like Nvidia's most recent earnings call, I want to search the entire web

02:43For queries around fish oil supplements, I would focus on academic sources

02:48For gym workout recommendations, I might turn to social, and if I wanted to learn how to perform a specific exercise, I might want To watch some videos, the writing option is Perplexity's attempt at offering a more creative-oriented model, and as you can see, it generates text without searching the web, but again, in my own personal experience, I found the paid versions of Chat GPT and Google Gemini to be much better at creative writing

03:13The attach feature is a bit weird in that free users can only attach and upload PDFs, but not images

03:21At the same time, though, we can just convert images to PDFs and upload those, so I guess that's a workaround

03:28Now, let's go through a real-world use case: how to force Wi-Fi connection after connecting to Marriott

03:34Wi-Fi on an iPhone, since I chose to search the entire web, we can see that Perplexity drew from a variety of sources, from Apple's help center, to Merit help center, to Reddit post

03:42I can click here to expand all sources, and I can even choose to remove sources that are outdated or unreliable

03:49Scrolling down, we see the true power of Perplexity

03:54Instead of clicking to multiple links on Google to find the right answer, we are literally given a set of instructions to follow

03:59Uh, by the way, this actually works

04:02If you connect to a public network but don't see the login page, you can literally just type in example.com

04:07In your browser, and this forces the connection

04:09On the right is what I call supplementary information

04:11Uh, Perplexity correctly identified that it might be easier for me to watch a video to troubleshoot my issue, so it provided a few videos here

04:19In other instances, it might search for images to help with my query

04:24Here's an example directly comparing Perplexity to Google

04:26I searched for a country with the most gold medals in the most recent Olympics

04:30Uh, I actually didn't know the answer going into this, by the way

04:33I didn't watch the Olympics except for the break dancing part, and uh, on Google, if I click into the first link, it tells me the number of gold medals each country has won in the entire history of the Olympics, not from the most recent one, which is a little bit awkward, and even more awkward, I had to scroll all the way down to the fifth link here for me to find that, oh, in the most recent Olympics, uh, the US and China tied in the number of gold medals, and that was a lot of clicking around and reading to find the information we wanted, right? When I type the same query into Perplexity, we actually get the correct answer right away, and Perplexity even includes a bit of trivia saying this is the first time in Olympic history that Two countries finish with the exact same number of gold medals

05:19Um, in the summer games, and Google's defense, I think an apple-to-apple comparison would have been to compare Perplexity to Google's AI overview feature, since those two are in the same category

05:30Let me know in the comments if you want to see a video on that

05:33Next up, let's talk about my favorite feature in Perplexity: collections

05:37Diving right into an example, I'm actually visiting Japan later this year, so I ask Perplexity when to visit if I want to avoid the peak tourist season, since I know I'll be doing more research over the next few weeks

05:50Click the three dots up here, add to collection, and click new collection, and then give this title "Trip to Japan 2," since I already have an existing collection from previously

06:00And down here, I can add an AI prompt that will apply to the entire collection

06:05In this case, I tell Perplexity to assume the role of a seasoned travel agent with over 20 years of experience helping tourists uncover hidden gems in Japan

06:14When providing recommendations, prioritize local experiences that are tourist friendly, and now whenever I start a new conversation or thread in this collection, uh, Perplexity will remember to assume

06:26The role of a travel agent and give me answers tailored to my situation

06:32Next, you have a slightly more advanced use case

06:33As you can see, I've instructed this collection to generate a structured outline, uh, for a TED Talk presentation, following the SCQA framework used by top consulting firms

06:43I'll leave a link to this, the full prompt, down below

06:45Now, whenever I create a new thread in this collection, for example, gaming trends for the next few years and the impact on app developers, which is a topic related to my full-time job, by the way, uh, Perplexity delivers an outline for a presentation I can start building on

07:01Immediately, and although this workflow can also be achieved using custom GPTs and Gemini gems, I'm much more confident in the numbers and data here, since almost every single one of these bullet points have sources attached to them

07:13And to wrap up, you can access all your collections by clicking into the library tab, and you can also make edits to the entire collection by clicking the three dots here and clicking edit collection

07:26So far, we've focused on the positives, so now let's dive into an example where Perplexity doesn't perform very well compared to Chat and Google Gemini

07:32Here, I use the same prompt and ask Chat GPT and Perplexity help me brainstorm thumbnail ideas for this video you're watching

07:41I'm not going to read the responses, but if you pause the video, you will see Chat GPT's ideas are much more creative and relevant, and I ended up creating my thumbnail based on one of these ideas

07:50Obviously, this is just one example, but I can constantly tell you that, as of right now, you're much better off using Chat GPT or Google Gemini for high-brain-intensive creative tasks, and that's also another reason why Perplexity is competing more with Google AI overviews than Gemini or Chat GPT, since AI overviews also

08:08Provides answers with a higher degree of accuracy, theoretically speaking

08:14Moving on, although I pay for Perplexity Pro, most users will be just fine with a free version

08:20As a pro user, you can first set your preferred text-to-text and text-to-image models

08:26As mentioned before, it is worth mentioning that, uh, Flux is a very popular image generation model right now, and generating images is also a pro-only feature in Perplexity

08:36Paid users can also use the pro search feature up to 600 times a day, as opposed to just five times

08:43Uh, Pro Search basically takes into account more sources, and the answers are more detailed than what you would get from a regular quick search, and that basically sums up the number of differences between Pro and free

08:56There are some Perplexity features I didn't touch on today simply because I don't use them

09:01For example, if you click the plus icon here, uh, you can create a page where Perplexity generates an entire blog post for you based on your initial prompt, and if I wanted to, I could click here to publish the page, and this might show up in the Discover tab, which acts like a personalized news feed, but I'm just not sure I want to be reading AI generated articles all day, so finally if you

09:24Head on over to labs.perplexity

09:30Uh, this playground acts like a sandbox environment where developers can test out Perplexity's large language models before integrating them into their own applications

09:39If you found this video helpful, I have an entire playlist where I break down complex AI topics for beginners

09:45See you on the next video, in the meantime, have a great one.