AI conversational search engine Perplexity wants to keep you informed about this year’s elections and has introduced a new one Election Information Center designed to do just that. The hub uses Perplexity’s AI tools to provide visitors with real-time information.
Perplexity sees the hub as a seed for future voter awareness and participation, a hub that has accessible information about candidates, voting numbers and results and can prove that AI will not fall into hallucinations around important, fast-changing topics like elections.
You will find all kinds of election-related information on the platform. Perplexity limits its sources to reputable providers like The Associated Press and Democracy Works to ensure there are no wrong or fabricated answers from the AI about the elections and various other votes. The hub contains data on state and federal elections, as well as voting proposals in various states. Real-time tracking ensures that users are kept informed when things change.
“We want to do our part to support an informed electorate, so we built the Election Hub on Perplexity’s Answer Engine: an access point for understanding important issues, voting intelligently and tracking election results,” Perplexity explains in a announcement. “We answer your election-related questions using a curated set of the most trusted and informative sources.”
AI election advice
The hub is fairly easy to use, especially if you’ve played with Perplexity and the AI search engine. It was only launched a few days ago, limiting the usefulness of information about voting requirements, polling places and times, and related details. But these elements will be a boon to users in future votes.
The AI also helps summarize voting measures and candidate profiles, including official policy positions and who has endorsed the measures and candidates. That’s a good resource when there’s a flood of information before every election. You can use the hub without a subscription to Perplexity’s premium services, another point of accessibility. Perplexity hopes to encourage people to try out the hub. And it doesn’t appear to generate any sponsored follow-up questions, which makes sense as it would be somewhat at odds with the unbiased, informative tone Perplexity is going for.
“We want to make it as easy as possible to receive trusted, easy-to-understand information to inform your voting decisions. For each answer, you can view the sources that led to an answer so you can dive deeper and see the materials referenced, “Whether you want to understand complex voting measures, verify candidate positions, or simply find your polling place, Perplexity is here to support your community involvement.”