Perplexity's "answer engine" primarily focuses on providing direct, concise answers to users' questions by synthesizing content from multiple sources using large language models (LLMs). It aims to offer a more intuitive and efficient search experience compared to traditional search engines.
Publishers are critical of Perplexity's search engine because it scrapes content from their websites and presents it as answers, potentially reducing the need for users to visit the original source. This impacts publishers' ad revenue and traffic. Additionally, Perplexity has been accused of plagiarism and ignoring robots.txt files, which has raised concerns about the ethical implications of its practices.