Learn 80% of Perplexity in under 10 minutes!

- This is a no nonsense guide to using perplexity. It introduces the features of the free version and explains why buying the pro version of perplexity does not give you access to other paid AI tools. - Speaker A introduces the focus feature and the writing option of perplexity. The attach feature is a bit weird in that free users can only attach and upload PDF's but not images. - In a real world use case how to force Wi Fi connection after connecting to Marriott Wifi on an iPhone, perplexity gives a set of instructions to follow and compares perplexity to Google's AI overview feature. - Speaker A talks about the favorite feature in perplexity collections, which is the ability to add an AI prompt that will apply to the entire collection and instruct perplexity to generate a structured outline for Tensorflow presentation. - Speaker A shows an example where perplexity doesn't perform very well compared to chat JPT and Google Gemini. He thinks it's better to use chatgpt or Google Gemini for high brain intensive creative tasks.

Here's a no nonsense guide to using perplexity first up, while many of you are familiar with chatgpt and Google Gemini, you might not know where perplexity fits in your AI toolkit. Imagine a spectrum. On one end, we have tools like Chatgpt and Gemini designed for high brain power creative tasks. On the other end are tools like perplexity and Google Search, which excel at delivering accurate and real time information. And of course, we can't forget all the way to the right. In a league of its own, we have the Internet's undisputed single source of truth, Reddit. Put simply, for tasks like brainstorming, editing, and writing, where you don't care about factual accuracy, chatgpt and Gemini definitely deliver better outputs. But if you need a relatively high level of confidence in your answer, like deciding which supplements to take or troubleshooting software issues, perplexity is the way to go diving right into the settings I really like how perplexity lets us exclude our data from their training process while still allowing us to access our conversation history under the library tab. I'll talk about the Pro features at the very end, since this video is mainly on the free version. But first I need to debunk a myth. Other creators are saying buying the pro version of perplexity does not give you access to other paid AI tools like chatgpt, even if you can select their models here. This is because even if they use the same underlying model, chatgpt and perplexity apply completely different fine tuning methods. For example, perplexity optimizes for accuracy, speed, and a more search oriented approach. If you don't know what fine tuning means, check out my video summarizing Google's intro to AI course. But the bottom line here is, even if you can select the same models, you do not get the same experience as the other AI tools. Next, moving on to the profile tab. This self introduction section works just like Chacha BT's custom instructions, as in, the instructions you add here, apply to all conversations within perplexity. For example, my instructions include structure your writing and respond like a consultant, adopt a conversational tone, use simple language, et cetera. And since we only need to add this once to benefit forever, I highly recommend customizing this to fit your needs. If you're feeling a bit lazy, I'll leave a link down below to my custom instructions, and I'll also leave a link to my workspace toolkit if you want to make a copy of my favorite prompt for productivity. Now let's actually start using perplexity by going back to the home tab, where you'll see the focus feature. This basically lets you narrow down the sources you want perplexity to use, which can drastically improve the quality of your output. For example, if I'm searching for real time news like Nvidia's most recent earnings call, I want to search the entire web for queries around fish oil supplements. I would focus on academic sources. For gym workout recommendations, I might turn to social, and if I wanted to learn how to perform a specific exercise, I might want to watch some videos. The writing option is perplexity's attempt at offering a more creative oriented model, and as you can see, it generates text without searching the web. But again, in my own personal experience, I found the paid versions of chat, GPT and Google Gemini to be much better at creative writing. The attach feature is a bit weird in that free users can only attach and upload PDF's but not images. At the same time, though, we can just convert images to PDF's and upload those. So I guess that's a workaround. Now let's go through a real world use case how to force Wi Fi connection after connecting to Marriott Wifi on an iPhone since I chose to search the entire web, we can see that perplexity drew from a variety of sources, from Apple's help Center to merit's help center to Reddit posts. I can click here to expand all sources, and I can even choose to remove sources that are outdated or unreliable. Scrolling down, we see the true power of perplexity. Instead of clicking to multiple links on Google to find the right answer, we are literally given a set of instructions to follow. By the way, this actually works. If you connect to a public network but don't see the login page, you can literally just type in example.com in your browser and this forces the connection on the right is what I call supplementary information. Perplexity correctly identified that it might be easier for me to watch a video to troubleshoot my issue, so I provided a few videos here. Other instances, it might search for images to help with my query. Here's an example directly comparing perplexity to Google I searched for a country with the most gold medals in the most recent Olympics. I actually didn't know the answer going to this. By the way, I didn't watch the Olympics except for the breakdancing part. And on Google, if I click into the first link, it tells me the number of gold medals each country has won in the entire history of the Olympics, not from the most recent one which is a little bit awkward and even more awkward. I had to scroll all the way down to the fifth link here for me to find that. Oh, in the most recent Olympics, the US and China tied in the number of gold medals, and that was a lot of clicking around and reading to find the information we wanted, right? When I type the same query into perplexity, we actually get the correct answer right away. And perplexity even includes a bit of trivia saying this is the first time in Olympic history that two countries finished with the exact same number of gold medals in the Summer games. In Google's defense, I think an Apple to Apple comparison would have been to compare perplexity to Google's AI overview feature, since those two are in the same category. Let me know in the comments if you want to see a video on that. Next up, let's talk about my favorite feature in perplexity collections, diving right into an example. I'm actually visiting Japan later this year, so I asked perplexity when to visit if I want to avoid the peak tourist season. Since I know I'll be doing more research over the next few weeks, I can click the three dots up here, add to collection, and click new collection, and then give this title trip to Japan. Two, since I already have an existing collection from previously and down here, I can add an AI prompt that will apply to the entire collection. In this case, I tell perplexity to assume the role of a seasoned travel agent with over 20 years of experience helping tourists uncover hidden gems in Japan when providing recommendations, prioritize local experiences that are tourist friendly. And now, whenever I start a new conversation or thread in this collection, perplexity will remember to assume the role of a travel agent and give me answers tailored to my situation. Next, we have a slightly more advanced use case. As you can see, I've instructed this collection to generate a structured outline for Tensorflow presentation following the SCQA framework used by top consulting firms. I'll leave a link to this the full prompt down below. Now, whenever I create a new thread in this collection, for example, gaming trends for the next few years and the impact on app developers, which is a topic related to my full time job, by the way, perplexity delivers an outline for a presentation I can start building on immediately. And although this workflow can also be achieved using custom GBTs and Gemini Gems, I'm much more confident in the numbers and data here, since almost every single one of these bullet points have sources attached to them. And to wrap up, you can access all your collections by clicking into the library tab, and you can also make edits to the entire collection by clicking the three dots here and clicking edit collection. So far we focus on the positives. So now let's dive into an example where perplexity doesn't perform very well compared to chat JPT and Google Gemini. Here, I used the same prompt and asked chatgpt and perplexity to help me brainstorm thumbnail ideas for this video you're watching. I'm not gonna read the responses, but if you pause the video you will see chat JPT's ideas are much more creative and relevant, and I ended up creating my thumbnail based on one of these ideas. Obviously this is just one example, but I can constantly tell you that as of right now, you're much better off using chatgpt or Google Gemini for high brain intensive creative tasks. And that's also another reason why perplexity is competing more with Google AI overviews than Gemini or chatgpt, since AI overviews also provides answers with a higher degree of accuracy. Theoretically speaking. Moving on. Although I pay for perplexity Pro, most users will be just fine with the free version. As a pro user, you can first set your preferred text to text and text to image models. As mentioned before, it is worth mentioning that flux is a very popular image generation model right now, and generating images is also a pro only feature. In perplexity, paid users can also use the Pro search feature up to 600 times a day, as opposed to just five times. Pro searchers basically takes into account more sources and the answers are more detailed than what you would get from a regular quick search, and that basically sums up the number of differences between pro and free. There are some perplexity features I didn't touch on today simply because I don't use them. For example, if you click the plus icon here, you can create a page of where perplexity generates an entire blog post for you based on your initial prompt. And if I wanted to, I could click here to publish the page and this might show up in the Discover tab, which acts like a personalized newsfeed. But I'm just not sure I want to be reading AI generated articles all day. So finally, if you head on over to labs perplexity AI this playground acts like a sandbox environment where developers can test out perplexities large language models before integrating them into their own applications. If you found this video helpful, I have an entire playlist where I break down complex AI topics for beginners. See you on the next video. In the meantime, have a great one.