”Perplexed No Longer”

~ Elizabeth

Reading my genealogical magazine, I learned of a search site called “Perplexity.” Unlike search engines such as Google, it uses AI in a creative way. You type a question and it searches a variety of sources to produce an answer. You can then ask additional questions to elaborate on what you have found in the first response. Each answer shows the sources used, all reliable ones.

I tried it out with my research for the book on Great Aunt Lucy. Knowing that she was a landscape painter in Chicago in the 1870’s I began to search for more detail. After asking a general question “who was Lucy Durham a landscape painter in Chicago in the 1870’s” I was given citations in two catalogs listing her water colors. Knowing nothing about water colors, I began asking a series of questions such as “when did watercolor painting become recognized as fine art in the United States?” After learning that she was part of a new wave in painting, I naturally wanted to know all about the paints themselves in the 1870’s. Perplexity let me know the colors available to her at that time which gave me an idea of what her works might have looked like. No illustrations exist on line or off that show her actual work.

At a family dinner we used Perplexity to entertain ourselves last week with a series of macabre queries, courtesy of my teen grandson, about still at large serial killers. (Beetley Pete would be impressed.) I curtailed the research when I was worn out from all the banter.

Free to use, Perplexity also offers a “pro” version allowing many more “pro” searches than the free one. I tried out the free one first, and then spent for one month of the enhanced one to see if it was worth it. So far it has been.

I hope that it is available world wide. It is the first use of AI that I can fully embrace. No more scrolling through hundreds of useless search engine results to find very specific answers. I hope it gives Google a run for its money. We’ll see.

(I am no influencer! I receive no kickbacks for recommending things or books.)

26 thoughts on “”Perplexed No Longer””

  5. AI is here for good, whether we like it or not. As long as we can find a way to eliminate or reduce the obvious privacy concerns, I see value in some of its applications.

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  7. I just asked it two questions before leaving this comment, and I was very impressed! I didn’t have to sign in or create and account, and it offered extra choices and alternative answers too. Good recommendation, Elizabeth. I am reblogging this post today.

    Best wishes, Pete.

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