– Perplexity’s AI search engine will now include sponsored follow-up questions from major publishers, similar to Google’s advertising model
– Companies can pay to have their question displayed as a sponsored link within the AI’s responses
– The revenue generated from this sponsorship scheme will be divided between the publishers and Perplexity
– Publishers see this as a potential new revenue stream in the face of AI’s impact on traditional publishing and distribution systems
– Offering a financial incentive to publishers is a way for Perplexity to enhance its services and maintain goodwill with data providers
– OpenAI has also entered the AI web search space with its own tool, SearchGPT, which may also incorporate sponsored answers in the future.