Trump Media just announced a new AI search engine named Truth Search AI. The tool is powered by Perplexity, which is a well-known AI search engine that has been around since 2022.
A press release about the new AI search engine states that the tool is designed to “exponentially increase the amount of information available to its users.”
Truth Search AI is now in beta testing on the web version of Truth Social. The Android and iOS versions of the app should support the Truth Search AI beta soon.
“We’re excited to partner with Truth Social to bring powerful AI to an audience with important questions. Curiosity is the engine of change, and Perplexity’s AI is developed to empower curiosity by delivering direct, reliable answers with transparent citations that allow anyone to dig deeper,” said Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko.
Responses to the news will likely be mixed depending on political leanings and thoughts about AI. At least one Reddit thread was full of jokes, complaints, and warnings.
“I’d rather bing,” said Reddit user Old_Channel44. That was one of the kinder, more light-hearted comments in a thread responding to Trump Media’s announcement.
Others said they will no longer use Perplexity now that the company has partnered with Trump media.
At the time of publication, few outlets have covered the news, so it may be a while before we can see a broad public reaction to the launch of Truth Search AI.
What is Perplexity?
Perplexity is a search engine powered by AI. Like many competing products, Perplexity searches the web for real-time information to respond to search queries.
Perplexity was founded in 2022 and was among the first wave of search engines to integrate AI. While AI-generated or assisted responses are commonplace now, Perplexity was in on the trend early.
A Q&A page from the makers of Perplexity emphasizes that the search engine provides conversational answers and that results are “backed by verifiable sources.” That claim has been disputed by several outlets, which I discuss more below.
Perplexity supports multiple AI models, including GPT models from OpenAI, Anthropic’s Claude, and DeepSeek R1. You can choose the specific model you’d like to respond to your queries.
Perplexity promotes its search engine as an “intelligent research assistant” that helps you get answers without requiring many clicks. The basic idea is to answer questions with summaries backed by sources rather than just providing a list of links.
As opposed to having a chat-focused interface like ChatGPT and Copilot, Perplexity presents information in the form of summaries and longer answers.
Perplexity has a free version that supports quick searches. It also has a paid pro mode that uses GPT-4.1, Claude 4.0 Sonnet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, or Sonar (Perplexity’s own model).
There are Perplexity apps on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. You can also use the tool through the web.
Perplexity plagiarism controversy
The very features that Perplexity hypes as differentiators between its tool and other AI search engines have also drawn criticism and accusations of plagiarism.
In June 2024, WIRED called Perplexity a “Bullshit Machine” and claimed the search engine stole content and scraped websites without following the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which is a web standard that can designate certain parts of websites should not be scraped by bots.
The same report outlined how Perplexity’s results range from accurate paraphrasing to “summarizing stories inaccurately and with minimal attribution.” In a more extreme case, Perplexity falsely claimed that WIRED reported a specific police officer had committed a crime.
Ironically, Perplexity was accused of plagiarizing the WIRED report discussing plagiarism.
Forbes has also accused Perplexity of plagiarism.
Perplexity is not the only AI tool to be accused of plagiarism or sharing false information. OpenAI and Microsoft have faced several lawsuits about copyright infringement.
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