Over the past two months, Jeff Bezos-backed AI startup (Perplexity) has continuously added many new features to its search engine, such as allowing users to search for patents to research more easily.
Most recently, Perplexity announced that they have completely redesigned Comet Assistant, an AI assistant that plays a central role in their unique AI Comet browser.
Unlike the traditional tab interface of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, Perplexity's Comet brings a unique synthetic AI experience.
It allows users to directly ask questions about the website they are viewing, along with many other useful apps.
This synthetic AI browser was made available for free to all Windows and Mac users earlier this year.
Perplexity has upgraded Comet Assistant to make this AI browser able to perform more actions across many more diverse tasks.
"Our internal tests show that Comet Assistant is 23% better than its predecessor," the company said. This is helpful when your task for a virtual assistant requires it to perform multiple steps correctly and in order.
Some outstanding features of the new Comet Assistant include:
Working across multiple tabs: Comet Assistant now has the ability to switch back and forth between tabs to fill in a spreadshead or other data entry tasks, making it a real multi- task assistant.
user permission: The AI browser will ask the user if they want to run tasks directly in the Comet browser, ensuring maximum control for the user.
Interact with complex websites: Perplexity has also had a basic architecture adjustment, allowing it to better recognize and interact with complex web environments.
Perplexity has also launched a new AI tool designed to make research patent searches easier, a process that is considered extremely difficult.
This tool allows users to search for patents in natural language.
For example, users can ask Perplexity " important quantum computing patents from 2024" or "What patents are there for AI language learning? ".
In addition to actively adding new features, Perplexity also announced a series of partnerships that helped the company's valuation skyrocket, currently at about 20 billion USD.
Notably, Snap, the parent company of the Snapchat app, said it has signed a deal with Perplexity AI to integrate its AI solution into the social media app starting in early 2026.
Integrated AI services will provide Snap users with real-time answers from reliable sources.
Recently, Perplexity has also upgraded the Finance dashboard (Finance) to let users track the stocks and trading activities of US politicians.
The pace of continuous innovation and strategic partnerships are affirming Perplexity's position as not only a search engine, but also a multi-functional complex AI platform.
