5.4 Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine. Instead of just generating text from memory, it searches the live web, reads the results, and gives you a direct answer with links to its sources. This makes it useful for research where you need to trust and check the information.

For example, a university student writing a paper on Ethiopian coffee exports can ask Perplexity for recent figures and immediately see which websites the numbers came from, making it easier to cite real sources.