Perplexity has turned its AI “reply engine” right into a cell assistant on Android. The new assistant can reply common questions and carry out duties in your behalf, similar to writing an e-mail, setting a reminder, reserving dinners, and extra.
It’s additionally multimodal, which means you’ll be able to ask it questions on what’s in your display screen in addition to have it open your digicam and “see” what’s in entrance of you. In an example shared by Perplexity, a person asks the assistant to “get me a trip.” As soon as it learns the place the person needs to go, the assistant robotically opens Uber with accessible rides to that vacation spot.
I attempted it out for myself, and it’s form of neat. After I requested it to “open up a great podcast,” my telephone began taking part in the most recent episode of The Joe Rogan Expertise on YouTube. It labored moderately rapidly, although its style could also be questionable.
Utilizing my telephone’s digicam, Perplexity’s assistant efficiently recognized the promotional Pokémon pack I acquired in a McDonald’s Glad Meal (don’t decide), which I discovered spectacular because the promotion only started a couple of days ago. It additionally helped me write and ship a textual content to a member of the family utilizing the data in my contacts.
Alongside Samsung’s announcement of the Gemini-equipped Galaxy S25, Google revealed that its AI assistant can now full duties throughout a number of apps, in addition to full multimodal requests.
However Perplexity’s assistant doesn’t work throughout each app and with each function. It’s not capable of entry Slack or Reddit, for instance, and I additionally couldn’t use it to depart a touch upon a YouTube video. Proper now, the assistant helps Spotify, YouTube, and Uber, together with e-mail, messaging, and clock apps, in keeping with Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platick. “We’re persevering with so as to add help for extra apps and extra performance although, so that is simply the start line,” Platnick provides.
You may allow the assistant by way of the Perplexity app, which prompts you to interchange your telephone’s default assistant with Perplexity. From there, you’ll be able to swipe up on the left nook of your display screen or maintain down your own home button to entry the assistant.
It’s at present not accessible on the iPhone, nevertheless. “If Apple provides us the best permissions, we’ll make it occur,” Platnick says.