Perplexity has turned its AI “reply engine” right into a cellular assistant on Android. The new assistant can reply basic questions and carry out duties in your behalf, comparable to writing an e-mail, setting a reminder, reserving dinners, and extra.
It’s additionally multimodal, which means you may ask it questions on what’s in your display in addition to have it open your digicam and “see” what’s in entrance of you. In an example shared by Perplexity, a person asks the assistant to “get me a trip.” As soon as it learns the place the person needs to go, the assistant mechanically opens Uber with out there rides to that vacation spot.
I attempted it out for myself, and it’s form of neat. After I requested it to “open up an excellent podcast,” my telephone began enjoying the newest episode of The Joe Rogan Expertise on YouTube. It labored somewhat shortly, despite the fact that its style could also be questionable.
Utilizing my telephone’s digicam, Perplexity’s assistant efficiently recognized the promotional Pokémon pack I bought in a McDonald’s Completely satisfied Meal (don’t decide), which I discovered spectacular for the reason that promotion only started a couple of days ago. It additionally helped me write and ship a textual content to a member of the family utilizing the data in my contacts.
Alongside Samsung’s announcement of the Gemini-equipped Galaxy S25, Google revealed that its AI assistant can now full duties throughout a number of apps, in addition to full multimodal requests.
However Perplexity’s assistant doesn’t work throughout each app and with each function. It’s not in a position to entry Slack or Reddit, for instance, and I additionally couldn’t use it to depart a touch upon a YouTube video. Proper now, the assistant helps Spotify, YouTube, and Uber, together with e-mail, messaging, and clock apps, in accordance with Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platick. “We’re persevering with so as to add assist for extra apps and extra performance although, so that is simply the start line,” Platnick provides.
You may allow the assistant via the Perplexity app, which prompts you to exchange your telephone’s default assistant with Perplexity. From there, you may swipe up on the left nook of your display or maintain down your own home button to entry the assistant.
It’s at the moment not out there on the iPhone, nonetheless. “If Apple provides us the correct permissions, we’ll make it occur,” Platnick says.