PayPal has partnered with Perplexity to provide away a free AI subscription. (Picture by Cheng Xin/Getty Photographs)
Getty Photographs
In case you missed out on the free Perplexity Professional subscription offer to all U.S.-based Samsung galaxy phone owners, or the free Perplexity Pro student offer, then the AI firm has another free trial choice through PayPal and Venmo.
PayPal and Venmo customers will get free entry to Perplexity Professional, an AI chatbot, and early entry to Comet, Perplexity’s new internet browser that builds AI into the shopping expertise. The bundle is value $200 per yr however free to customers of the respective fee apps in choose international locations, till December thirty first 2025, with extra international locations being included within the promotion this month, PayPal stated.
To verify in case you’re eligible, open the PayPal app and head to the brand new subscriptions hub tab, the place the provide could be discovered.
The subscriptions hub is a brand new characteristic that has been introduced alongside the Comet invite and free Perplexity Professional provide. This comes because the AI firm continues to unfold its service, free of charge, to as many customers as attainable by partnerships with main expertise corporations.
In June, Samsung and Perplexity introduced a partnership that noticed the chatbot service being gifted to thousands and thousands of Galaxy cellphone and pill customers within the U.S. Bloomberg reported that the 2 corporations had been in talks to have the service built-in into Galaxy telephones, alongside Google Gemini. Apple, too, has held inner conversations about probably buying Perplexity.
Final yr, the AI firm gave away a yr’s subscription of the Professional tier to college students at 45 universities in its “Race to Infinity” promotion. That was finally scrapped, however clearly there’s a battle to hook college students on to AI chatbots as faculty returned this month.
Google is providing a free Gemini Professional plan to college students, whereas Microsoft is operating a three-month free trial promotion of 365 Private, which comes with Co-Pilot. Samsung, too, is now providing one year of Google AI Pro to tablet buyers, whereas cellphone patrons solely get six months.
It’s Not Simply PayPal, Why Are Tech Partnering With Perplexity?
EDMONTON, CANADA – APRIL 20: A picture of a girl holding a mobile phone in entrance of a Perplexity AI brand displayed on a pc display, on April 20, 2024, in Edmonton, Canada. (Picture by Artur Widak/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs)
NurPhoto through Getty Photographs
Perplexity’s schtick is that it focuses on analysis accuracy, utilizing citations so its work can simply be checked. Whereas Gemini, ChatGPT and different AI companies can carry out these search features, they generally tend to get simply verifiable info fallacious. Anybody with expertise of those chatbots can have seen this first-hand. That is partially why the likes of Google and OpenAI discuss up their merchandise’ artistic talents, equivalent to picture era and human-like conversations over easy, correct search queries.
Perplexity’s supposed analysis accuracy units it aside. Therefore the corporate’s heavy concentrate on college students. It is usually the lacking piece for cell AI companies. Extra confidence within the high quality of AI responses justifies the AI pivot (and big related value) Google, Samsung and Apple have made within the final two years. Many individuals will expertise AI for the primary time by their smartphone: these corporations will need that interplay to be factual and correct.
How right Perplexity’s output continues to be questionable, although. Merriam-Webster and its mother or father firm, Encyclopedia Britannica, are suing the AI startup for trademark infringement, claiming that Perplexity attaches the 2 corporations’ names to false or inaccurate solutions.
The lawsuit additionally alleges that Perplexity’s “reply engine” plagiarises copyrighted materials and “starves web publishers of revenue” by offering solutions with out customers needing to click on by.
Whereas partnerships, equivalent to PayPal’s free provide, could convey much less scrutiny. The end result of those lawsuits, and different comparable circumstances from The Wall Road Journal and New York Put up, alongside controversies round crawling blocked websites, could influence how the likes of Apple and Samsung proceed with integrating Perplexity into their ecosystems.
