Two AI startups tried to convince the world on Tuesday that their AI chatbots were safe enough to serve as an accurate, real-time source of information in a high-stakes presidential election: xAI and Perplexity.
Elon Musk's Grok flunked, providing wrong answers about races' outcomes before the polls even closed.

Meanwhile, Perplexity offered informative, real-time insights into the election and maps throughout the evening, linked to trusted historical resources when appropriate.

Perplexity went out on a limb, and it paid off.

Just before last weekend, the young startup said that it launched its election information hub to include real-time maps populated with voting data from Democracy Works and the Associated Press, the same info sources that power Google's election map. Unhelpfully, most other AI chatbots - such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini - simply refused to answer questions about the election.

No wonder most AI labs abstained from this election. It was simply the safe and sensible decision for many of them, as they've experienced embarrassing hallucinations at some point or another during the last year.

In particular, the company recently unleashed its Google competitor: ChatGPT Search. Yet the Sam Altman-led startup wasn't confident enough in the feature to answer questions on this election, forcing users instead to Vote.org. ChatGPT Search remains an early product, far too unreliable for people to use in scenarios outside of that of pure research or testing, and OpenAI appears to have recognized as much.

Contrasted to that, Perplexity has been testing out its Google competitor in real-world settings since December 2022 and clearly felt it had enough data to give this election a shot.

Winning at election night can set the internet search startup back in its ongoing fight with media companies; specifically, Dow Jones' recent lawsuit claiming the startup competes with media companies for the same audiences. Yet while there were thousands of outbound links throughout the AI chatbot's answers, Perplexity's election hub was also a destination on election night, and it did not need users to leave the app for all their information. It sounds like Perplexity was competing with media companies who, on election night, are competing for eyeballs, even though it gathers its information from those outlets. There was "record traffic" the day before, said Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, who was no doubt hoping to sustain that momentum.

Even as Perplexity had deals with Democracy Works, the AP and a few other media companies to power election features, the startup also indiscriminately used live election coverage from other media outlets such as CBS, CNN and the BBC. Okay, Perplexity offered attribution, but the company hasn't announced any revenue-sharing partnerships with these outlets, and it's unclear if any money changed hands.

How Perplexity did on Election Night
Let's first have a look at the features that Perplexity built for the election with nothing to do with the generative nature of the AI: the charts.

People generally like visual election charts, click into them, and see detailed data on a state-by-state level. It was a great play for Perplexity to build these out since they assured that their AI systems were not where one got information from the app.

When users visited Perplexity's election hub, they found a very familiar-looking electoral map of the United States, with some states colored blue for Kamala Harris, others red for Donald Trump. Obviously, Perplexity did not break any new ground with that feature — copying the display Google and every television network exhibits — but they didn't need to. Throughout the night, this map seemed to update every minute or so, reflecting what was on the Associated Press' website. It was a great way to track the election.

There were a few bugs in Perplexity's map at assorted times throughout the night. Srinivas replied to X users who were reporting imperfections--such as that Perplexity was not showing what percentage of votes had been counted--and he corrected them promptly.

For example, Perplexity offered another familiar feature-a state-by-state tracker-giving real-time information about swing states.

Now for the AI part. When asked questions about the current state of the presidential race, Perplexity answered with hedged responses that still gave mostly accurate information. These answers weren't as insightful as a commentator on CNN, nor as entertaining as The New York Times' election needle (which made a comeback this year). However, Perplexity only conjured a few minor hallucinations and, so to speak, delivered actual facts in time. At least that I can say for any other AI chatbot on the market.

When Perplexity tried to respond to clarifying questions about Harris' lead in "Blue Wall" states, it did hallucinate a bit. At that point in the night, it was talking about polling data, when it really should have been referring to real-time votes. But basically, the information was in the right ballpark, and other AI chatbots wouldn't even answer this question.

Another follow-up question we tried: How many ballots remain uncounted in swing states? I was unable to find this information anywhere else. Okay, so the only states that are really usable are Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but at least Perplexity didn't hallucinate for the others.

This is the first election where AI chatbots are an information source regarding our democratic processes. It will not be the last, however. Well-funded AI startups are at war to take information to people in new, faster, and more concise ways. Accuracy will be where the money is made going forward. Thus far, Perplexity has the early lead.