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On Tuesday, two AI startups tried to convince the world that their AI chatbots were good enough to be an accurate source of real-time information during a high-stakes presidential election: xAI and Perplexity.
Elon Musk’s project Grok failed almost immediately, providing wrong answers about the results of races even before the polls closed.
Perplexity, on the other hand, provided useful real-time election insights and maps throughout the night, linking to trusted resources and providing historical context where appropriate.
Bewilderment took a risky bet, and it paid off.
Late last week, the startup announced the launch of its Election Information Center, featuring real-time maps filled with voting data from Democracy Works and the Associated Press, the same information sources that power Google’s election map. This approach was different from most other AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, which simply refused to answer election-related questions.
It is understandable why most AI labs are not participating in this election. This has been the safe and responsible choice for many of them, as they have had embarrassing hallucinations at one time or another in the past year.
In particular, OpenAI recently launched its Google competitor, ChatGPT Search. But the Sam Altman-led startup didn’t trust this feature to answer questions about this election, and directed users to Vote.org instead. ChatGPT research is still an early product, and too unreliable for people to use in everyday scenarios, and OpenAI seems to have recognized this.
In contrast, Perplexity has been testing its rival Google in the real world since December 2022, and clearly felt it had enough data to give this election a chance.
Perplexity’s success on election night could handicap it in its ongoing battle with media companies. Specifically, a recent lawsuit filed by Dow Jones alleging that the startup is competing with media companies for the same audiences. Despite the many external links within the AI chatbot’s answers, Perplexity’s election center itself was a destination on election night, and it didn’t require users to exit the app to get all their information. It certainly appears that Perplexity was competing with media companies, which were also vying for attention on election night, even though Perplexity collects its information from those outlets. Even Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas He claimed He “recorded traffic” the day before and is clearly hoping to keep that momentum going.
While Perplexity has deals with Democracy Works, AP, and a few other media companies to run election features, the startup has also indiscriminately used live election coverage from other media outlets like CBS, CNN, and the BBC. Sure, Perplexity has offered attribution, but the company hasn’t announced any revenue-sharing partnerships with these outlets, and it’s unclear if any money changed hands.
How was the confusion on election night?
First, let’s start with Perplexity’s choice features that have nothing to do with generative AI: graphs.
People usually like visual election charts, clicking on them and seeing detailed state-by-state data. It was a smart move for Perplexity to create these elements and ensure that its AI systems aren’t the only source of information in the app.
When visiting Perplexity’s election center, users were met with a familiar-looking election map of the United States, with some states shown in blue for Kamala Harris and others in red for Donald Trump. Obviously, Perplexity didn’t reinvent the wheel with this feature — copying Google’s show and all of network TV’s shows — but they didn’t need to. Throughout the night, this map appeared to be updated every minute or so, reflecting information on the Associated Press website. It was a good way to follow the election.
There were errors in the Perplexity map periodically throughout the night. Srinivas Respond to users on X Which reported flaws, such as Perplexity not reporting the percentage of votes counted, and quickly addressed them.
Perplexity introduced another familiar feature, a case-by-case tracker, providing real-time information about swing cases.
Now for the AI part. When asked questions about the current state of the presidential race, Perplexity responded with conservative answers that still provided mostly accurate information. These answers were neither as insightful as a CNN commentator, nor as entertaining as the New York Times’ election needle (which returned this year). However, the bewilderment only showed a few small hallucinations and largely produced the relevant facts in time. This is more than I can say about any other AI chatbot on the market.
When trying to answer follow-up questions about Harris’ progress in “blue wall” states, I became a little confused. She was referring to polling data, when she should have been referring to real-time votes at this point in the night. However, the general information here was in the right ballpark, and other AI chatbots would not answer this question.
Here’s another follow-up question we tried: What ballots have yet to be counted in swing states? It was difficult to find an answer to this question elsewhere. Granted, the only useful answers here were in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but at least the other states weren’t baffled.
This election was the first to feature AI chatbots as a source of information about our democratic processes. However, this will not be the last election where this happens. Well-funded AI startups are struggling to get information to people in new, faster and more concise ways. Accuracy will be key to success here moving forward. So far, Perplexity has an early lead.
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