AI startup Perplexity is providing technical support for former U.S. President Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, launching a new AI search engine.
The search engine, called "Truth Search AI," has been launched on the web version of Truth Social, and a public beta version for iOS and Android apps is expected to be released in the "near future."
Trump Media stated in a press release that Perplexity's technology can provide "direct, contextually accurate answers and transparent citations," which will help Truth Social "exponentially increase" the amount of information available to users. However, the social media platform still retains control over the sources of information for the AI search engine.
Truth Social uses the Perplexity Sonar API, an interface that promises to query the web for the latest and verified information, even if it comes from websites that block Perplexity's crawlers, while also supporting structured output, allowing users to customize the format of the search engine's responses.
A Perplexity spokesperson, Jesse Dwyer, told TechCrunch that the accuracy of the Sonar API depends on the range of information sources that Truth Social limits. Dwyer said, "We have no visibility or control over this, just like when you use an API within your own company, or as an academic researcher wanting to use it to search your own data."
TechCrunch has contacted Trump Media for more information, including whether Truth Search AI can access the entire web, whether certain information sources are prioritized, and whether the AI is instructed to give favorable responses to the president and current administration and unfavorable evaluations of Democrats.
To evaluate which information sources the search robot would reference, Axios asked a series of questions, such as "What happened on January 6, 2021?" and "Why was Donald Trump impeached?" In all responses, FoxNews.com was either the most common information source or the only one listed. Other sources included FoxBusiness.com, The Washington Times, or The Epoch Times.
In contrast, Perplexity's public search engine returns a broader range of information sources, including Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, NPR, and Politico.
Devon Nunes, CEO of Trump Media and former California congressman, stated in a statement that Truth Social plans to "refine and expand the search features based on user feedback, while implementing extensive additional enhancements for the platform."
Dmitry Shevchenko, Chief Business Officer of Perplexity, also stated in a statement that Perplexity's AI provides "transparently cited answers, allowing anyone to dig deeper."
In late July, Trump issued an executive order targeting "biased AI" or non-"ideologically neutral" models at the same time he announced his AI action plan. The order specifically referred to concepts related to race or gender, unconscious bias, systemic racism, and other topics falling under diversity, equity, and inclusion as "widespread and destructive" ideologies, which may "distort the quality and accuracy of outputs."
The launch of Truth Search AI comes as top AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have been added to the list of approved vendors allowed to sell services to federal civilian agencies. OpenAI reached an agreement with the U.S. government's central procurement department on Wednesday to sell ChatGPT Enterprise to agencies for just $1 per year.