Perplexity announced on Tuesday the launch of its enterprise-level API service "Sonar", allowing businesses and developers to integrate its generative AI search capabilities into their own applications. The service is available in two versions: the basic Sonar and the advanced Sonar Pro, and it supports customers in customizing the information sources of the AI search engine. Unlike traditional AI models that rely solely on training data, Perplexity emphasizes that Sonar can connect to the internet in real-time and obtain information from reliable sources, thereby providing more factual and authoritative results.

360 Group recently announced the official launch of HarmonyOS native versions for its Nano AI Search and 360 AI Office applications, marking an important step in the company’s AI application strategy. As a multimodal content creation engine known in the industry as 'Search Engine 3.0', Nano AI Search has shown impressive performance since its launch in November 2024. Data shows that the application surpassed 1 million visits on its first day, and by December 2024, the visit count reached 359 million, ranking fourth in the 'AI Product Rankings · Global Overall List', becoming the only one in the TOP 10.

Recently, Baidu introduced a new search engine entry 'AI Search' (Chat.baidu.com) on its web homepage, marking an upgrade in the company's search services. This new platform is based on Baidu's Wenxin large model and integrates multiple content ecosystems such as Baidu Search, Baidu Health, Baidu Law, Baidu Wenku, and Baidu Education, aiming to provide ad-free, reliable, and authoritative search results.

In a recent round of financing, Silicon Valley startup Perplexity reached a valuation of $9 billion, tripling its previous valuation. The funding amount was $500 million, marking Perplexity's rapid development in the artificial intelligence search engine sector and strong investor interest. Established in 2020, the company focuses on developing AI-based search engines aimed at enhancing user search experiences. Its technology enables users to obtain information more efficiently, especially in

Brave Search announced a significant update on Thursday: the addition of a conversation mode to its 'Answer with AI' feature, allowing users to ask follow-up questions based on the initial search, greatly enhancing the coherence and depth of the search experience. The operation of this innovative feature is very intuitive. For example, when searching for 'Christopher Nolan movies,' the system first generates an AI summary that introduces the background of the director Nolan and his representative works. Now, users can ask follow-up questions in the dialogue box below the summary.

The AI Q&A platform Perplexity recently announced the official launch of its shopping feature, allowing users to shop directly through the platform and enjoy the convenience of one-click checkout and AI product recommendations. This new feature aims to enhance the online shopping experience by optimizing its search interface, helping users easily find the products they need. Perplexity's shopping feature is connected with multiple e-commerce platforms, including Shopify. When users perform product searches, Perplexity automatically aggregates and analyzes data from these sources.

AI search engine Perplexity officially launched its advertising program in the US market this week, creating a new model for search advertising. This highly anticipated AI company has successfully attracted several advertising giants, including Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann, and PMG. Unlike traditional search advertising, Perplexity has innovated an advertising format that integrates into the AI interaction process. Advertisers can naturally incorporate questions in relevant contexts, such as how to use Indeed to optimize job search strategies.

After an accidental encounter at a thrift store, former Apple engineer Alex Ruber and former Twitter and Asana engineer Parth Chopra joined forces to establish the second-hand goods search engine Encore, aimed at addressing the challenges consumers face in finding desired items within the vast second-hand market. This emerging startup has successfully been selected as one of the inaugural fall startups in Y Combinator's history. The two initially met on Y Combinator's founder matching platform, and later at an event.

Just a few days after launching the new search feature, ChatGPT experienced service outages on Monday morning, leaving many users frustrated. The outage mainly manifested as the system frequently displaying error messages, especially when users attempted to use the new search feature, which was particularly severe. According to user feedback, ChatGPT's webpage often showed '404 Not Found' error messages, making it difficult to conduct searches smoothly. This issue has garnered widespread attention, with outage reports appearing on DownDetector.

As the U.S. elections approach, AI search engines are facing significant challenges. At this critical moment, major tech companies are striving to provide accurate and reliable information to address concerns about misinformation and the 'hallucinations' generated by AI content. In this competition, Perplexity AI has caught attention with its new AI Election Center. This platform offers real-time updates, incorporating data from the Associated Press and collaborating with the nonprofit voter guidance site Democracy Works.

OpenAI has launched a new feature called ChatGPT search, which allows users to quickly obtain the latest web search results through a conversational interface and provides relevant webpage links. This improvement enables users to receive timely answers directly within ChatGPT without switching to traditional search engines. ChatGPT search combines the advantages of a natural language interface with the value of real-time information, such as sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more.

According to a recent report by The Information, Meta is quietly advancing an ambitious plan to develop a dedicated search engine for its AI chatbots. This strategic shift stems from Meta's deep reflection on the significant losses caused by changes to Apple's privacy policies. The search engine project has been under wraps for at least eight months. The company aims to integrate web indexing into Meta AI, thereby reducing its dependence on Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

In September 2024, OpenAI's ChatGPT achieved a milestone by surpassing Microsoft Bing in terms of traffic for the first time. This AI chatbot has seen significant growth in usage across web and mobile applications. According to Similarweb, ChatGPT's official website recorded over 3.1 billion global visits last month, a 112% increase compared to last year and an 18.7% rise from August.