“Just Google it.” That’s how most people found information they were interested in for more than a quarter-century.  All that is changing now. Today, the main reason fewer people are “Googling it” is that users are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper, Chatsonic, HuggingChat, Socratic, Grok, DeepSeek, IBM watsonx Assistant, Pi, and Character AI.  Or even more powerfully, they’re using tools that integrate old-fashioned search results with LLM-powered chatbot information, including Google Search (with Gemini), Microsoft Bing (with Copilot), You.com, and Perplexity AI. Old-school search engines used to give you links to websites that contained the information people were seeking. Nowadays, more and more want the answers directly — even if the tool also provides links. This just-give-me-the-answer idea is perfect for a future in which people will ask an always-present assistant for the kind of information they used to get from Google. Smart glasses, of course, will be the main interface to arbitrary information, but other wearables, mobile devices, IoT devices and general purpose computers will enable a personal assistant that knows all about the world and knows all about us, individually and personally.  I’ve been living in this future recently, and I can tell you that it will prove irresistible to most people.  Perplexity’s great leap forward Perplexity AI is a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system launched in 2022 that answers questions directly by searching the web in real time, pulling from news sites, academic journals, and databases, then writing up a summary with accompanied search links. It uses AI models like GPT-4 and Claude 3 to understand your question, find the best information, and explain it in plain English. In February, Perplexity added a feature called “Deep Research,” which reads hundreds of sources, and reasons through the material to produce a very detailed, well-organized report.  Then in April, Perplexity unveiled a new version of the company’s iPhone app, which provides a glimpse into the future of getting information from an always-present assistant. For starters, it became an actual assistant, rather than just being an AI search tool. It can now do things even Siri, Apple’s own assistant, can’t do — which is somewhat astonishing, given how closed and Apple-centric the company’s operating systems tend to be.  For example, you can use your voice to ask Perplexity on your iPhone to play a song from Apple Music, open a podcast, set reminders, schedule calendar events, or even book a ride with Uber. It can scan your Apple Calendar and read out your appointments or add a reminder. It can bring up Apple Maps and give you directions or send an email through Apple Mail.  Perplexity also goes beyond what Siri can do by opening third-party apps like OpenTable or YouTube and pre-filling reservation requests or video searches. For example, if you ask it to find a dinner reservation, it’ll fill in the date, time, and number of guests in OpenTable, so all you have to do is tap “Book.” If you want to find a specific moment in a YouTube video, just describe it, and Perplexity will queue it up instantly. One of the most practical features is that Perplexity saves every conversation as a “Thread” in the app, so you can revisit or continue a previous task anytime. You can even add shortcuts to Perplexity on your home or lock screen for fast access. Of course, there are limits to what Apple lets Perplexity do. It can’t send text messages directly, set alarms, control core iPhone functions like muting notifications, or access the camera for live object recognition.  At this point, Android users are yawning at the mention of these features. The Android version of Perplexity got many of these capabilities and more back in January. On Android, Perplexity Assistant can write emails, set reminders, book rides, make reservations, play media, and even use your phone’s camera to answer questions about what it sees or what’s on your screen. It acts as a layer on top of your device, integrating with many apps so you don’t have to switch between them, and supports multimodal input and multi-app actions. Some features, like screen sharing and camera access for contextual awareness, are available on Android though not yet on iOS. But the most futuristic thing Perplexity can do, it can do on iPhone exclusively.  The persistent assistant Perplexity AI’s new iPhone app offers something the company calls “persistent listening.” When enabled, the assistant keeps listening for your voice even after you leave the app or switch to something else. You tap the voice icon or use the Action Button to start, and from that point, the assistant keeps the microphone open, so you don’t have to keep pressing anything or reopening the app to continue the conversation.  This continuous listening works as long as the app or its background process is allowed by iOS to run, which means it can keep going for extended periods unless you close the app or revoke microphone access. The assistant is designed to pick up your voice even with background noise (it doesn’t always work).  It doesn’t use a wake word like “Hey Siri,” so it won’t accidentally respond to other conversations; it’s only listening for input after you’ve started a session. If you stop interacting for about a minute or so, or close the session, it stops listening; until that point, it holds onto the context and keeps the channel open, making it feel like a real assistant that doesn’t lose track of what you were talking about. Lately, I’ve been taking advantage of the continuous listening feature via both my Ray-Ban Meta glasses and my AirPods. And this combination of continuous listening and hearing the answers privately from close-to-the-ears speakers, feels very much like something we’re all going to do all the time in the near future.  Perplexity’s quiet coup is quite a feat. It’s actually got me never using Siri anymore, even to do things like set reminders in Apple’s Reminders app. (I’m also no longer using Meta AI in my Ray-Ban Meta glasses anymore, at least for arbitrary information.) The tech industry is currently fighting a brutal, winner-take-all war for the future of personal assistants that do things for us, use our apps for us, get information for us and generally help us out all day, every day, even when we’re walking around, driving or doing the dishes. Once the public gets in the habit of using one specific tool, it could be another quarter-century before that habit can be changed by new technologies.  I’d have to say that — for now — Perplexity AI is winning that war.