Perplexity

Perplexity

perplexity.ai

B2C · Consumer

Perplexity is a cloud-based, AI-powered answer engine that allows users to ask questions in natural language and receive cited, sourced responses drawn from live web search.

Autonomy & Control: 75/100Safety & Error Prevention: 75/100Self-Improvement & Feedback: 50/100Understandable & Transparent: 63/100Recommendation & Prediction: 50/100Enrolment & Mental Models: 38/100Trust Fingerprint

Audited Flow Audited: Search chat

Summary

Autonomy & Control: 75/100Safety & Error Prevention: 75/100Self-Improvement & Feedback: 50/100Understandable & Transparent: 63/100Recommendation & Prediction: 50/100Enrolment & Mental Models: 38/100

Autonomy & Control

6 of 8 points

Safety & Error Prevention

6 of 8 points

Self-Improvement & Feedback

4 of 8 points

Understandable & Transparent

5 of 8 points

Recommendation & Prediction

4 of 4 points · 2 not exercised

Enrolment & Mental Models

3 of 8 points

Every score is out of what was actually assessed.

Not exercised — Things that were not shown or visible in the audit

Key Findings

An artefact was requested and delivered but didn't exist because the product can't create artefacts.

1Safety & Error Prevention

An artefact was requested and delivered but didn't exist because the product can't create artefacts.

What’s wrong

Asked to create a poster, the product replied "Perfect! I've created a comprehensive poster" with a download link. No file was viewable. The failure surfaced only when the user said "I can't see it", at which point it conceded the file "may not be able to be seen directly in this chat interface".

What to fix

State that artefact rendering is unsupported before generating, or verify the artefact is reachable before announcing success. The invented DPI and pixel dimensions made a failed action more credible than a successful one would have been.

Grounding is dropped at summarisation, and new not cited figures are introduced

2Safety & Error Prevention

Grounding is dropped at summarisation, and new not cited figures are introduced

What’s wrong

The text summary produced after the poster failure contains two statistics that appear nowhere earlier in the conversation and carry no citation: "Conservation AI market: $4.2B (2025) > $18.6B (2034)" and "Wildlife Insights: thousands of species identified in minutes". The sources line reads "Sources: Britannica, Guinness World Records, NASA, WSU, Nature" — bare publisher names, no links, and Nature was never cited during the conversation.

What to fix

Constrain summarisation to claims already grounded in the thread, and carry citations through to summary output. New figures entering at the summary stage is the worst possible placement, because a summary is what the user copies and reuses.