Perplexity Will Show Live US Election Results Despite AI Accuracy Warnings

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, Perplexity launched an election information hub that relies on data from The Associated Press and Democracy Works to provide live updates and information about the 2024 US general election, which takes place on Tuesday, November 5. "Starting Tuesday, we'll be offering live updates on elections using data from The Associated Press so you can stay informed on presidential, senate, and house races at both a state and national level," Perplexity wrote in a blog post. The site will pull data from special data sources (called APIs) hosted by the two organizations. As of Monday, Perplexity's hub currently provides interactive information on voting requirements, poll times, and summaries about ballot measures, candidates, policy positions, and endorsements. Users can ask questions about the information similar to using a chatbot like ChatGPT.

Perplexity's embrace of providing election information is an exception in the AI field. Wary about accidentally providing misinformation, competitor AI assistants from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic currently direct users elsewhere or decline to answer election questions. OpenAI's ChatGPT Search directs election result queries to The Associated Press and Reuters. Perplexity describes its new elections hub as "an entry point for understanding key issues." But like other AI models, Perplexity can produce confabulations (plausible incorrect information) when generating responses. That could present an accuracy problem because the site's Voter Guide service uses AI language models to summarize and interpret information pulled from the web. Here's what Ars Technica advises: "Take what you see on Perplexity's site with a huge grain of salt -- do not rely on it without verifying the information with a trustworthy external source."

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