As OpenAI prepares to launch a product specifically designed for search to compete with Google and Bing, Perplexity, a company that has emerged as a leader in the AI-first knowledge engine field, is actively expanding the influence of its products through industry partnerships. A few weeks ago, the startup led by Aravind Srinivas shared its global expansion plans with major telecommunications companies. Now, as the next step in its development strategy, Perplexity is partnering with SoundHound, a leader in the voice AI field.

According to the announced partnership agreement, Perplexity's Large Language Model (LLM) will power SoundHound's Chat AI voice assistant, further enhancing its capabilities. Both companies expect this collaboration to improve the user experience of SoundHound and allow Perplexity to enter a broader market.

What can Perplexity and SoundHound bring?

SoundHound, which has been established for over a decade, provides speech recognition and voice AI solutions to various industries. For consumers, the company has developed Chat AI, a voice assistant similar to Siri, which allows users to interact with it and get instant answers. Chat AI integrates specific knowledge domains - real-time updated data on topics such as weather, sports, stocks, flight status, and restaurants - and combines this information with static large language models to generate detailed responses.

Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer of Perplexity, stated in a declaration, "Through this partnership... we are one step closer to our goal of providing services to everyone on every device with Perplexity. With the popularity of voice AI, we enable users to conveniently access the information they need when they need it."

As the next step in the collaboration, Perplexity's online LLM will be integrated into Chat AI. These models can search in real-time on the web to utilize the most helpful and up-to-date information when forming responses. This will enable Chat AI to answer various time-sensitive queries, surpassing the capabilities of only connecting real-time data and static LLM.

SoundHound states that Perplexity's online LLM will significantly expand the types and complexity of questions that Chat AI can handle. For example, a user might ask, "How does this week's gasoline price compare to last week?" The answer should include accurate real-time gasoline price information and a comprehensive generative AI-style comparison with last week's price. Subsequently, the answer can continue with, "Navigate to the nearest gas station," allowing SoundHound to seamlessly integrate data from appropriate sources and provide directions on the user's device.

However, it is worth noting that SoundHound has not specified which online LLMs from Perplexity will be used. Currently, the startup offers two sizes of products: pplx-7b-online and pplx-70b-online.

A smarter voice assistant is coming

With Perplexity's models, SoundHound Chat AI is expected to become one of the most powerful generative AI-driven voice assistants on the market, competing with Google Assistant and Alexa. This product is the world's first to launch with generative AI capabilities and the first to be deployed in automotive production. It has already been deployed in 12 countries and 18 languages through a collaboration with Stellantis.

"By integrating Perplexity's search capabilities into SoundHound Chat AI, we enhance the performance of voice assistants and the types of queries they can easily handle. Where this technology has been deployed in vehicles, we have observed a significant shift in usage habits - usage has multiplied. We firmly believe that with more and more people choosing to speak rather than type, this enhanced functionality will further meet user needs," said Mike Zagorsek, Chief Operating Officer of SoundHound AI.

It is worth mentioning that both Google and Amazon have announced their use of generative AI models to enhance their voice assistants - Google Assistant and Alexa. However, these experiences have not been rolled out globally. Apple is also expected to release an improved version of Siri based on generative AI. In the long run, with this LLM-driven transformation, people can expect voice assistants - traditionally rigid and process-driven - to engage in more natural and human-like conversations while providing more useful and accurate responses.

For Perplexity, the partnership with SoundHound means another powerful distribution channel, further expanding the coverage of its LLM-based search capabilities. Prior to this, the company had independently established partnerships with SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom, ElevenLabs, Copy AI, Arc, and Nothing.