ARTICLE
Perplexity is eyeing a hardware debut by building an AI-enabled, voice-based device for users to ask questions and receive answers. “Considering making a simple, under $50 hardware device, that will reliably answer your questions voice to voice,” Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of the AI-powered search engine, said in a post on X on Monday, November 25. “If this post gets more than 5000 likes, will definitely make it,” he added. In response to his post reaching the mark on Tuesday, Srinivas said, “Alright. LFG!” Perplexity has emerged as a key player that is looking to take on Google in the rapidly intensifying race to develop AI search engines. The AI search startup was founded by an IIT Madras graduate first and made quite a splash when it raised tens of millions of dollars from the likes of Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos and other prominent tech investors. However, Perplexity is also facing multiple legal threats from heavyweight publishers like The New York Times , Dow Jones , and Condé Nast for allegedly crawling their websites when it was not supposed to and reproducing portions of news articles verbatim. Several high-profile AI startups are planning to dabble in hardware in order to redefine how users interact with AI systems and gain an edge in the fiercely competitive AI race. Earlier this year, the company behind AI image generator Midjourney said it was forming a new team to work on building hardware. Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that he was working with Jony Ive, the former design chief of Apple , on a new AI hardware project. Although, a few AI ventures who tried their hand at hardware have faltered and collapsed in recent months. For instance, Rabbit’s handheld, AI-powered gadget called R1 was supposed to replace smartphones as it could do everything a lot faster and better. However, months after its impressive debut at CES 2024, device sales have been underwhelming with a slow rollout of additional features. Humane’s wearable Ai Pin suffered a similar fate – if not a harsher one – with reports suggesting that the company is up for acquisition. None
What’s New
Spotlight
Advertisement
Featured News
Latest From This Week
Popular News
