For twenty years, when people have referred to “searching” the internet, they’ve meant typing a query and combing through a list of 10 blue links. You click, you read, you tap back, and you click again. It’s manual labor. And Perplexity AI, the startup increasingly making Google sweat, has just decided that this type of model is archaic. They’ve released a feature called ‘Pages’, and, well, what it does is like turning the search engine into a magazine editor.
What is ‘Pages’?
Here is the deal. Instead of just giving you an answer, “Pages” takes your question — say, “The history of renewable energy in Japan” — and spits out a fully formatted article. We’re talking headlines, sections, bullet points — and, crucially, citations. It doesn’t just barf out text; it processes information into a legible, shareable synopsis.
Pretend you are a scientist or an author. You used to spend hours consolidating tabs. Perplexity, as a junior analyst, is assigned the role. It goes out and makes the rounds on the internet, and it brings them back together again, as a coherent story.” Then you soften it , rearrange, and publish it right. It blurs the line between a tool that seeks information and one that generates knowledge.
The Trust Factor: Citations
The fundamental problem with AI writing tools (like ChatGPT) is that of hallucination — they confidently lie. The secret sauce of Perplexity has always been its source obsession. ‘Pages’ continues this. Each assertion in the constructed report is supported. It’s as if you are reading a Wikipedia page while the footnotes appear in real time.
This is a major change for both students and workers. It turns AI from a “chatbot” you chat with into a “publishing engine” that makes things. You are not just receiving an answer; you are receiving a document.
The Content Ouroboros
There is also a philosophical dimension to this. And when AI starts writing the items that summarize the web, what will happen in the future? Who writes in its? ‘Pages’ is meant for creators, so they can spin up a SEO-friendly article in seconds. This leads to a heady (and terrifying) future in which the internet is filled with AI-generated reports about other AI-generated reports.
But for now, the value is indisputable. If you just NEED to comprehend some complex thing in loose order right now, read a structured ‘Page’ rather than the SEO-spam blog swamp. Perplexity is gambling on this bet: that the future of search isn’t about finding a website; it’s about creating an answer page that didn’t exist until you asked for it.
