Perplexity debuts an AI-powered election information hub

AI search firm Perplexity is placing to the take a look at whether or not it’s a good suggestion to make use of AI to serve essential voting info with a brand new Election Information Hub it announced on Friday. The hub presents issues like AI-generated solutions to voting questions and summaries of candidates, and on November fifth, Election Day, the corporate says it is going to observe vote counts stay, utilizing information from The Related Press.

Perplexity says its voter info, which incorporates polling necessities, places, and instances, is predicated on information from Democracy Works. (The identical group powers related options from Google). And that its election-related solutions come from “a curated set of probably the most reliable and informative sources.”

Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick confirmed in an electronic mail to The Verge that each AP and Democracy Works are official companions for the hub. Platnick elaborated on Perplexity’s sources:

We chosen domains which might be non-partisan and fact-checked, together with Ballotpedia and information organizations. We’re actively monitoring our methods to make sure that we proceed to prioritize these sources when answering election-related queries.

The hub serves up particulars about what’s on the poll for no matter location you enter (as an illustration, an deal with or metropolis). There are additionally tabs for monitoring the elections for the President, US Senate, and US Home as they arrive in beginning Tuesday, with per-state breakdowns displaying the proportion of votes counted and who’s main.

The AI summaries once I clicked on candidates had some errors, like failing to say that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who’s on the poll the place I stay, had dropped out of the race. It additionally listed a “Future Madam Potus” candidate that, when clicked, led me to the above abstract of Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy, besides with some meme photos that aren’t in her regular abstract.

After this text was printed, Perplexity up to date the election hub; now, write-in candidates are labeled as such within the Presidential candidates checklist, and it not summarizes Harris when clicking on Future Madam Potus — who’s a write-in candidate, according to Ballotpedia — for me. Perplexity additionally now mentions that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. withdrew from the race, too, though not till the top of the abstract, and never each time.

The errors illustrate the problem of utilizing accuracy-challenged generative AI for such a high-stakes use case, and why different AI firms have shied away from doing it. ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google Gemini every deflect voter info inquiries to different sources like canivote.org or Google Search. Microsoft’s Copilot merely refused to reply once I tried.

Correction, November 4th: An earlier model of this text misspelled the Perplexity spokesperson’s identify. It’s spelled “Platnick,” not “Plotnick.”

Replace, November 4th: Up to date to replicate that after this story was printed, Perplexity addressed the errors which might be talked about in it.