Perplexity Launches AI-Driven Election Information Hub

Perplexity, an AI search company, is exploring the feasibility of utilizing AI to provide essential voting information through its newly announced Election Information Hub. This hub, introduced on Friday, offers AI-generated responses to voting queries, summaries of candidates, and, on November 5th, Election Day, it plans to deliver live vote counts using data from The Associated Press. The company states that its voter information, including polling requirements, locations, and times, is derived from Democracy Works. This group also supports similar features for Google. According to Perplexity, its election-related answers are sourced from “a curated set of the most trustworthy and informative sources.”

Sara Plotnick, a spokesperson for Perplexity, confirmed via email to The Verge that both the Associated Press and Democracy Works are official collaborators for the hub. Plotnick further explained that Perplexity’s sources are selected from non-partisan and fact-checked domains, such as Ballotpedia and various news organizations. The company actively monitors its systems to ensure that these sources are prioritized when addressing election-related queries.

The hub provides information on ballot contents for any entered location, such as an address or city. There are also tabs available to monitor the elections of the President, US Senate, and US House, starting from Tuesday. These tabs offer state-by-state breakdowns, indicating the percentage of votes counted and leading candidates.

However, some errors were noted in the AI summaries. For instance, it failed to mention that Robert F. Kennedy, who appeared on the ballot in certain locations, had withdrawn from the race. Additionally, a “Future Madam Potus” candidate was listed, which, when clicked, directed users to a summary of Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy but with meme images not typically associated with her profile. Plotnick mentioned that the company is investigating why Kennedy’s withdrawal wasn’t noted. She explained that depending on the location, write-in candidates might appear, which could clarify the “Future Madam Potus” listing. (Ballotpedia confirms that Future Madam Potus is indeed running as a write-in candidate.)

These inaccuracies highlight the challenges of using generative AI, which can struggle with precision, in high-stakes contexts. This has led other AI companies, such as ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google Gemini, to direct voter-related queries to alternative resources like canivote.org or Google Search. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Copilot opted not to provide answers to such queries.

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