However, the company \u2014 which also offers paid subscriptions \u2014 began phasing out the ads late last year. On Tuesday, executives at the company said it had no plans to pursue advertising further. <\/p>\n
\u201cA user needs to believe this is the best possible answer, to keep using the product and be willing to pay for it,\u201d a Perplexity<\/a> executive said. <\/p>\n Perplexity\u2019s ads were labelled and the company said they had no bearing on the chatbot\u2019s responses. <\/p>\n But the executive said in general \u201cthe challenge with ads is that a user would just start doubting everything\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009which is why we don\u2019t see it as a fruitful thing to focus on right now\u201d.<\/p>\n It comes as leading AI groups have followed Perplexity in introducing advertising to start making money from free users and appease investors as they burn through cash to train and sustain the large language models that underpin popular products.<\/p>\n OpenAI last week began testing advertising on its core product, ChatGPT, for users who do not pay for a subscription. It has a similar model, where labelled ads appear below answers. It has emphasised that ChatGPT\u2019s answers are not influenced by these sponsors.<\/p>\n Google has advertising in AI mode, as well as in its AI Overviews summaries on traditional search. But the search giant has so far held off introducing ads into its Gemini chatbot.<\/p>\n In contrast, Anthropic this month committed to keeping its chatbot Claude free from ads.<\/p>\n Perplexity was also one of the first to introduce shopping features on its platform, followed by Google and OpenAI. Unlike its competitors, however, executives said Perplexity did not make money from this feature or a cut of sales.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n
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