How To Use Perplexity AI (Best AI Research Tool)

Without a doubt, Perplexity is one of the most powerful AI tools out there, especially if you're doing any type of research. In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how Perplexity works and how I use it in my own workflows to get some incredible results. Okay, so at this point, I'm going to assume you already have a Perplexity AI account. If you don't, just come on over to perplexity. ai. All you have to do is put in your email and you'll have access to a brand new account. Now, the first thing I suggest that you do is come into the settings. So down here on the left, click on this down icon and then go ahead and click on preferences. Now you'll notice that a lot of these preferences or settings don't actually do anything or they're not that important. I'm just going to show you the important stuff. So first of all, underneath artificial intelligence, you'll see image generation model. So yes, Perplexity does create images. You can choose which model it uses. Two of the best models are Nano Banana and GPT image 1. However, I already have access to those through Gemini and chat GBT. So, I want to try something different. So, I'm putting on Cdream 4. 5. But you can definitely play around with this. See which image generation model you like the best and go ahead and leave it on that one. Next, you have the option of turning off AI data retention. So, basically, if this is on, then anything that you put into Perplexity, they will then use to help train their models. If you don't like that or don't feel comfortable with that, go ahead and toggle that off. And then finally under preferences, we have the sidebar customization. So you'll notice that when you're chatting with Perplexity, we have this sidebar over here on the left. So this is where you can customize it. And personally, the only one that I leave on is spaces. I find the other ones to just be distracting and cause a lot of clutter, but you can certainly turn on the ones that you want. The discover tab is very, very popular. A lot of people really like that. So you can play around with that and see if you like it. But personally, all I leave on is spaces. Next, we'll click on the left here where it says personalization. So, here at the top, you can give Perplexity some information about who you are that it will always know anytime it is chatting with you. So, for instance, I could say I create videos on YouTube about AI. Now, personally, I don't actually put anything in here. And the reason being is because Perplexity already has memory engaged down here. You can see I turned on both reference search library and reference saved memories. This will allow perplexity to look at past chats to be able to understand better who I am and in addition to that create memories or that's basically information that it knows about me that it'll then be able to reference in future chats as well that will enable it to give much more personalized responses. And so I don't really feel the strong urge to have any sort of additional information in here. But of course that's completely up to you. You could also update your location or you can turn off location sharing like I've done. And the last thing that I suggest is you click on the left here where it says notifications and go ahead and toggle these off. Otherwise, it keeps sending you emails letting you know that deep research has completed and it just kind of gets annoying. And in terms of settings, that's all you have to do. So now we're going to click on back. And now we are ready to start using Perplexity. Now Perplexity may look like a standard AI chatbot like ChatGBT or Gemini, but it is built entirely different. This is really an AI search engine. So when we type in here a question, you'll notice two things. First of all, it is lightning fast. Second of all, it always gives you responses that include citations. So when I asked it, "What's the tallest building in the world? " It gives me a response. And right next to it, I can actually see just by hovering over it the sources that it used for that information. I can click through them and even click on any of them to open it up in a new tab to verify for myself that this information is correct. And you notice it doesn't just use one source, it uses multiple sources. So I have found that this actually is a lot more accurate than a traditional AI chatbot. In addition to that, you can always click on the top here where it says links. So, these are just like almost like standard Google search results right here as well as an images tab just like you would have on Google when you search for something and you go over to images. Now, before you start searching though, let's make sure that you actually have everything the way that you want because you'll notice there are a lot of buttons down here. So, let me explain what all of these mean. So, the first one right here is just called search. And this will give you those fast answers to everyday questions. And I would say about 80% of the time I just leave it on this because it's going to get me my answers quickly and we get all those citations. It's super accurate even though it's quick. If you go with the second option, this one is called research. This is basically deep research if you've used that on other platforms. And what this will do is do the same type of research that fast or the regular search will do, but will be a little bit longer and will be a lot more indepth. But again, daytoday, I find that the regular search is super accurate all on its own, which is why 80% of the time, again, I'm leaving it on the regular search. The

last one here is called labs. And this you can use to actually generate documents, reports, even little apps. So, it kind of takes your research up a level. I'm going to switch back over to search, and then we'll look at the settings over here. So, the next one is one of my favorite buttons on Perplexity because if you click this, you can actually choose what Perplexity searches when it's looking for your answer. So, by default, web is always on, but you can also toggle on social, which will search things like Reddit or Twitter. You can toggle on finance, which will search things like SEC filings, and you can even connect your Gmail and Google Drive, as well as a bunch of other sources that it can then search through when looking for your answers. Now, the reason I love this so much is because I love toggling on social. A lot of times I want to hear what people are saying about certain subjects. Let's say I'm looking for a review of something like a new iPhone. I might search and hear what are people thinking about or saying about the new iPhone. And with social on, it will actually be able to pull in real time information from different social media platforms to get a real consensus on whether people like that new phone or not. I just find it super helpful to have this on in addition to having web on. This next button allows you to choose the model that's going to be used for your query. Now, Perplexity has their own model called Sonar, but you also get access in here to a lot of top models like OpenAI models, GPT 5. 2 for instance, Cloud models, Gemini, Grock, Kimmy K2. So, you can choose whichever one that you want. Now, personally, I just leave this on best. And that's because I found that no matter which model I choose, for the type of prompting that I do and the type of research that I do, I actually find it doesn't make a huge difference which model I select. That's not always going to be the case, but for what I do, I do find that to be the case. So, I leave it on best, and that allows Perplexity to choose which model is best based on the question or the prompt I'm putting in there. Also, know that if you choose, let's say, GPT 5. 2, 2. It's actually going to not be the same as just using GPT 5. 2 directly inside of chat GBT. It's different because it's inside of Perplexi. And I'll show you an example of that later, but again, I leave this on best. The next button here allows you to attach different files or you can do that through a connection like Google Drive. The next one will allow you to dictate into Proplexity so you don't have to type it out. So, I can say something like, "What's the best truck to get if I want to get a truck camper? " So, a lot easier than typing. And then finally, this one right here is AI voice mode. So, you can actually have a back and forth conversation with Perplexity. So, let me show you some examples of how I use this and then I'll show you some other things like spaces and we'll even compare some of the results against something like chat GBT. So, I'll show you something I do every single day when I come into perplexity. I leave it on thinking, but underneath this one, I turn on social. And then I'll say something like, check Twitter for important updates in the past 24 hours related to Gemini, Notebook, LM, ChatgBT, or Google AI. Now, you'll notice, of course, this goes really fast. And you'll notice all the places it's checking right here. If I want to see that again, I can just click right here. That will give me this dropown. I can see it checked all these X accounts. It checked some Google blogs. It checked Reddit, bunch of other places as well, including YouTube. Then here are the actual results. So, it says there were no major updates on Twitter in the past 24 hours, probably because it was Christmas. However, here are some recent highlights that were mentioned more that came out recently, but weren't in the past 24 hours. And it kind of breaks all that down for me. Now, here it says that Notebook LM now attaches directly inside of Gemini Chats as a knowledge source. So, if you wanted to ask a follow-up question on that, all you have to do is highlight it, click add to follow-up, and I'll say something like, "What are people on X saying about this? Do they like it? " Go ahead and submit that. And now it's actually searching for people's opinions on X, and whether people have reported liking this or not. And here it says, "Users on Twitter express strong enthusiasm for this new integration, calling it a gamecher that eliminates tab switching. " So, you see, it's giving me access to all this social information, and it's giving me a consensus on what people out there are saying about any topic that I want to learn about or want more information about. Now, another way I love using Perplexity is to help me do research for anything that I'm looking to buy. So, recently, I was looking at potentially buying one of those um massaging eye masks. It goes across your eyes, it heats up, and it actually massages your face. But, I was kind of wondering, do they actually work? Do they actually do anything? So, for this one, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to turn on GPT 5. 2. And I'm also going to run the exact same search inside of Chat GBT as well, so you can see the difference between the two of them. So, here you can see chat GBT gave us a

response. This is a good response, but it's just a block of text. Inside of Perplexity, we have pretty much very similar information, but it's structured much differently. We have titles here for each paragraph and then an explanation. So chat GBT is a lot more conversational and perplexity even though again the same model is really more designed to provide you with information in a very practical way. So this is one of the reasons I really like perplexity when I'm doing research is because I just want an answer quickly. I don't want to be having a conversation. I don't want a friend for this. I just want information and Perplexity is so good at providing that. And then finally, let's talk about spaces. So over here on the left, you hover over spaces, you'll see all the spaces that you've already created or you can create new ones or you can go ahead and use these templates. But I suggest you actually come in here and create your own because they can be very powerful and they prevent you from having to repeat the same information over and over again. So I'll create a new space here. I'm going to call this one Twitter research. And here you can do a few different things. So, first of all, I suggest you click where it says add instructions. And this will allow you to give precise instructions on how you want Perplexity or what you want Perplexity to do anytime you chat with it inside of this space. So, I can say to it, always prioritize post from X when I ask you questions. But, you can be very detailed in your instructions here and tell it whatever you want. So, I'll go ahead and click on save there. You can also click right here where it says searching with custom instructions. And then you can do other things like you can upload files and add URLs as well that can be used as a search. So, if you've ever used Notebook LM, it's sort of similar to that, right? With Notebook LM, you can go ahead and add links to sources. You can upload files as sources and then this space will pull from those when it's answering your questions. So, this is great if you're working on large projects and have a lot of information scattered in a lot of different locations. You can bring it all into one space. You can connect to Google Drive. You can upload PDFs. You can include links as long as they can access them publicly. You can put in custom instructions. And once you start chatting with it, all your threads are going to appear here as well. So, it's a really great way to stay super organized with your chats. Now, for myself, I primarily use Perplexity for two different things. First of all, like I said before, it's basically a Google replacement for me. If I need to search for anything, I just come into Perplexity and search for it. This is particularly helpful when I'm on the go. I can just pull out my phone and use the app and get a very detailed response. In addition to that, I always start all my research for any of my content creation in here. Once I get that information, I then put it into Notebook LM or inside of Gemini, and I use that to actually do my writing. I don't find that perplexity is all that great when it comes to writing, either creative writing or even structured writing, like when I have it help me with scripts. I just find that Gemini is much better than that. But Perplexi is really great for those initial research stages. And pro tip, I have one final thing I want to show you. If you click on down here on your settings and go ahead and click on tasks, you can actually set up tasks that happen every single day for you automatically. So again, my daily Twitter check or I have it uh search for certain Twitter accounts and any updates from them. I don't do that manually. I actually set that up as a recurring tasks task I should say. So every morning when I wake up, I just pull out my phone, see what the new news is, and I'm ready to go and I'm caught up on the day's news. So there you go. That's probably 80% of what you need to know about Perplexity in order to get the most out of it. But I want to hear from you now. So, let me know in the comments section what you're planning on using Perplexity for or if you already use it, what you do use it for. Don't be shy. I love hearing from you guys and I learn a lot from you guys. So, please share with me how you're using Perplexity because I would genuinely love to hear about your experiences. Otherwise, if you want to hear about another AI tool that I mentioned a couple times in this video, it's one of my favorites, Notebook LM, check out this video right here. Inside of this one, I cover some of my favorite Notebook LM features. So, you definitely want to check this out. And I'll see you over there in just one second.