Update on Model Clarity

Hi everyone - Aravind here, Perplexity CEO.  

Over the last week there have been some threads about model clarity on Perplexity. Thanks for your patience while we figured out what broke.  Here is an update. 

The short version: this was an engineering bug, and we wouldn’t have found it without this thread (thank you). It’s fixed, and we’re making some updates to model transparency. 

The long version: Sometimes Perplexity will fall back to alternate models during periods of peak demand for a specific model, or when there’s an error with the model you chose, or after periods of prolonged heavy usage (fraud prevention reasons).  What happened in this case is the chip icon at the bottom of the answer incorrectly reported which model was actually used in some of these fallback scenarios. 

We’ve identified and fixed the bug. The icon will now appear for models other than “Best” and should always accurately report the model that was actually used to create the answer. As I said, this was an engineering bug and not intentional.  

This bug also showed us we could be even clearer about model availability. We’ll be experimenting with different banners in the coming weeks that help us increase transparency, prevent fraud, and ensure everyone gets fair access to high-demand models. As I mentioned, your feedback in this thread (and Discord) helped us catch this error, so I wanted to comment personally to say thanks. Also, thank you for making Perplexity so important to your work.

Here are the two threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/perplexity_ai/comments/1opaiam/perplexity_is_deliberately_scamming_and_rerouting/https://www.reddit.com/r/perplexity_ai/comments/1oqzmpv/perplexity_is_still_scamming_us_with_modal/

Discord thread:
https://discord.com/channels/1047197230748151888/1433498892544114788