Perplexity launches AI assistant on Android with smart reasoning
AI search engine Perplexity has announced the launch of a new mobile assistant on Android. On Thursday (Jan. 23), the firm said that the assistant can handle tasks like writing emails, setting reminders, booking dinners, and more, all by using reasoning.
Perplexity has been considered a digital Swiss Army knife of sorts, using its multimodal abilities to be able to do multiple tasks at once.
Introducing Perplexity Assistant.
Assistant uses reasoning, search, and apps to help with daily tasks ranging from simple questions to multi-app actions. You can book dinner, find a forgotten song, call a ride, draft emails, set reminders, and more.
Available on Play Store. pic.twitter.com/UHdUIiDOzD
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) January 23, 2025
Perplexity shared an example where a user simply asks the assistant to “get me a ride.” After finding out the destination, the assistant automatically opens Uber and shows the available rides to get there.
Here are a few more examples of what Perplexity Assistant can do. We can’t wait to see how you use it.
Get it here: https://t.co/H4J9cr68So pic.twitter.com/F7ibSFfrgq
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) January 23, 2025
Thanks to Perplexity’s own search engine, the assistant can pull in real-time web information instead of just spitting out pre-programmed answers. In theory, this makes it smarter and more flexible than a lot of its competitors. It can also keep track of context across multiple tasks, so it won’t double-book your schedule and remembers your preferences—what you like and what you’d rather avoid.
You can do many cool things like booking an Uber, finding dinner tables, playing an old YouTube video, playing songs, getting directions, and translating Shakespeare, all with voice and a simple action button or gesture. pic.twitter.com/RJEsZWM6SF
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) January 23, 2025
The company’s CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote on X: “You can do many cool things like booking an Uber, finding dinner tables, playing an old YouTube video, playing songs, getting directions, and translating Shakespeare, all with voice and a simple action button or gesture.
“Cool thing about this is everything stays in context.”
Perplexity assistant isn’t quite perfect – yetWe tried it out for ourselves and found it to be fairly responsive. Asking it for a “local weather report,” it rightly pointed out that it was cloudy with heavy rain expected, bringing up a rather neat box with the current temperature.
The Perplexity AI assistant for Android figured out where I was. Credit: Perplexity AI / ReadWrite
I also pointed my phone’s camera at my plate, and Perplexity’s assistant figured out I was having a tuna niçoise salad. It even gave me a rough estimate of the calories. While it wasn’t spot-on—off by about 60 calories—it was still pretty close. So, it still has a few teething problems in this iteration.
The AI assistant was able to guess what I was eating. Credit: Perplexity AI / ReadWrite
Perplexity Assistant is starting off free for Perplexity users and will be available in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi.
Featured image: Perplexity AI
The post Perplexity launches AI assistant on Android with smart reasoning appeared first on ReadWrite.