The announcement came directly from Aravind SrinivasCEO of Perplexityduring an interview with The Verge: il chatbot that the company is working on will be powered by Yelp.
According to Srinivas, in fact, there are many people who use chatbots as common search engines. In this sense, equip a tool of this type with reviews and information on restaurants and various shops it can be a sensible move. The company therefore decided to integrate maps, reviews and other information on commercial activities, fishing in the enormous Yelp database.
Yelp is a platform founded in 2004 in California, with a site and a specific app that offer reviews and facilitate reservations at restaurants and similar services.
During the interview, the CEO of Perplexity, the way the chatbot matches text and external links it already represents a strong point compared to the competition. Advanced systems such as ChatGPT, Copilot e Geminiseem to be a step backwards in this respect.
Apparently, Srinivas has decided to focus heavily on this peculiarity, finding an agreement with a brand known as Yelp. Regarding the financial details of the contract, the two companies have not revealed any information.
Perplexity and Yelp agreement: when the chatbot becomes a search engine
Perplexity is just the latest company from Artificial intelligence to enter into an agreement with third parties to obtain constantly updated sources of information, although Srinivas underlined that this is not a real collaboration, but how Yelp is licensing its data.
The relationship with Yelp is not the first undertaken by Perplexity which, as regards mathematical calculations, relies on a contract stipulated with WolframAlpha. The CEO himself has hinted that there could be further agreements in the future.
The most famous operation of this type is, at present, the maxi agreement between Google e Reddit per 60 million dollars per year. Also in this case, the data provided by the social network will be used to develop the Mountain View company’s AI models. OpenAI, the flagship company of the sector, has also taken this path with various agreements with publishers involved in journalism.