Should You Use Perplexity AI?

Polycrisis Navigator’s review

April 4, 2026

Recommendation: BOYCOTT
“Take it further” recommendation: Boycott all AI chatbots

I came to this conclusion using my four-part review method, which means considering observations, emotions, intuitive impressions, and rational analysis.

OBSERVATIONS
  • Basic info on Perplexity AI:
    • Founded in 2022
    • Privately owned, based in San Francisco, CA
    • In 2025, it was valued at US$20 billion
    • Perplexity’s AI model is Sonar
    • Their online tool also provides access to other companies’ models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, Kimi)
  • Legal and ethical issues
  • Political and tech industry connections:
    • Powers an AI search engine on Truth Social (Donald Trump’s alternative to X/Twitter).
      • Truth Social has control over the model’s access to source materials.Testing seems to indicate that the model is restricted to politically rightwing news sources.
    • CEO and co-founder Aravind Srinivas previously worked at OpenAI, Google Brain, and Google DeepMind.
    • 2025: Perplexity made a $34.5 billion bid to buy Google’s Chrome browser in response to an antitrust case that might have forced the sale of Chrome.
    • 2025: Perplexity proposed a merger with TikTok when the latter was required to cut ties with China or cease operations in the U.S.
  • Transparency
    • The Perplexity AI website provides virtually no information about the company itself.
    • I was not able to find any statements from Perplexity on their environmental and social impact.
EMOtions
  • Before doing any research for this review, I felt pretty neutral about Perplexity. I’ve never used it, hadn’t heard much about it, and I’m not aware of people I know having used it.
  • As I learned more about Perplexity, I started to feel angry that it looks like just another arm of the giant tech companies that are deploying AI so recklessly.
  • And I feel disappointed that even though there seems to be such a proliferation of different AI companies, they all seem, not just similar to one another, but also deeply interconnected.
INTUITIVE IMPRESSIONS
  • An image that comes to mind is a many-headed Hydra. Big Tech is not just an assortment of companies, but a dangerous collective entity. Perplexity appears to be one of the ways that this collective entity constantly sprouts new “arms” or “heads”—as a strategy for survival and domination.
  • The name, “Perplexity,” strikes me as giving confusion a positive spin. As if implying that it’s not alarming that the AI models’ users and makers are lacking in understanding as to what these models really are and what they are really doing. Instead of a cause for serious concern, it’s merely a curiosity.
RATIONAL ANALYSIS
  • Perplexity has all the strikes against it that we see with AI companies generally:
    • Disregard for negative environmental and social impacts (large-scale energy costs and pollution from data centers, deception of users, cognitive impairment from use, etc.)
    • A general lack of transparency
    • Concentration of power into the hands of corporate elites
  • Perplexity has already used unethical methods to build AI (ignoring copyrights and violating refusals of consent for data harvesting)
  • The company is apparently okay with its product being used to further partisan political ends.
  • The company shows no signs of turning from its irresponsible ways.
  • The verdict is clear: don’t use it.

Note: As always, if you think I have missed something significant in this review, please contact me.

Similar Posts