Title

The Ultimate Guide to Perplexity AI: Turn 10 Hours of Research into 10 Minutes 🔍✨

Introduction

Hello, creators! Welcome to a2set's AI Tutorial.

How do you usually conduct your research? You probably type keywords into Google and click through an endless stream of blogs and articles. You get baited by clickbait ads, hit the back button, and copy-paste necessary information into a notepad. Before you know it, 2 to 3 hours have flown by.

What if you had a smart secretary who could read dozens of websites and research papers in seconds, pick out only the core information, and submit a perfect summary complete with citations?

The 'Perplexity AI' we are introducing today is exactly that secretary. If ChatGPT is an 'AI that speaks well,' Perplexity is an 'AI obsessed with searching and fact-checking.' By the time you finish reading this tutorial, your number one bookmark will change from Google to Perplexity. Let's dive right into how to use its latest UI!

What is Perplexity?

Backed heavily by Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon) and NVIDIA, Perplexity is currently the most closely watched 'Conversational AI Search Engine' in the world.

Its biggest feature is that 'Hallucinations (making things up) are almost non-existent.' When you ask ChatGPT something it doesn't know, it sometimes crafts a plausible lie, right? However, Perplexity searches the internet in real-time and attaches clear source footnotes like [1], [2] to every sentence it writes, essentially saying, "I wrote this answer based on reading this website and this article." For planners, marketers, college students, and creators where reliability is life, or when you need to grasp the latest trends, it is an absolute game-changer.

Step 1: Unveiling the Latest UI & Dissecting the Left Menu

When you first log in to Perplexity (perplexity.ai), a clean main screen welcomes you. Before we dive into serious searching, let's nail down the powerful functions of the menus on the left side of the screen.

• ➕ New: The default button you press to end a current conversation and start a search or research on a completely new topic.
  
  

• 💻 Computer (New!): The most innovative feature added recently! Going beyond simple search, this is an Agent feature where the AI directly performs complex tasks (like 'building a prototype app', 'lead generation', 'organizing resumes') as if it were an employee sitting at your computer. (Available in Pro version)
  
  

• 📂 Spaces: Perplexity's core organizational tool! You can create a 'Space' (room) for a specific project (e.g., "2026 Short-form Trend Analysis"), gather all related search histories, attachments, and reports like a folder, and share it with your team members.
  
  

• ⚙️ Customize: If you pre-fill your profile with your profession, interests, and preferred answer style, the AI automatically adjusts the difficulty and direction of its answers to perfectly suit your preferences.
  
  

• 🕒 History: An archive where you can always reopen all your past search and research conversations and ask follow-up questions.

Step 2: Searching Smartly (Targeted Domain Search)

Now, let's do some real research using the search bar in the center of the screen. The key is not just typing keywords like you do on Google, but asking long, specific questions as if you were talking to a human.

1. Above the search bar, there are specialized tabs like Finance, Health, Academic, and Patents. For example, if it's a college assignment, you can click Academic to force the AI to search primarily through research papers.

2. Enter your specific question into the central search bar. (You can also attach files!)

[Practical Prompt Example]

"Summarize the latest 2026 monetization trends for global short-form content (YouTube Shorts, Reels, etc.) and provide 3 successful revenue-generation strategies used by creators."


3. Press the [Enter] key.

Step 3: Understanding the Answer Structure (Perfect Sources & Footnotes)

Looking at the search result screen, you'll see a 100% reliable report that is qualitatively different from traditional Google or ChatGPT.

1. Sources: At the very top of the answer, you'll see link icons to dozens of websites, news articles, and reports that the AI actually read and referenced to write the answer. Clicking on them takes you directly to the original article.
   
   

2. Answer: A clean text summary appears, generated by reading massive amounts of documents and perfectly summarizing them according to your prompt.
   
   

3. Footnote Numbers [1], [2]: Tiny numbers are attached to the end of each sentence in the text. Hovering your mouse over these numbers proves the source, saying, "This sentence is a fact extracted exactly from news article number 1."
   
   

4. Related: After you finish reading the answer, the AI proactively recommends follow-up questions you might be curious about at the bottom, such as "What is the average advertising unit price for creators?" With a single click, your research expands infinitely.

Step 4: Saving and Sharing Beautifully in 'Spaces'

Finished your research? Now let's neatly store these excellent research results in your own folder or share them with others.

1. Look at the top right or bottom menu of the search result screen, and you will find a button to add this conversation to Spaces.
   
   

2. Create a new Space called "2026 Content Plan" and save this research there.
   
   

3. From now on, all research related to short-form trends can be conducted within this Space.
   
   

4. Click the [Share] button of the saved Space or research conversation to copy the link.
   
   

5. Send this link to your boss, team member, or friend via messenger. You'll be praised: "Wow, when did you find the time to do such in-depth research?"

Conclusion

If searching in the past was 'the grueling process of wandering around a massive library looking for a book one by one,' using Perplexity is like 'having the top Harvard secretary next to you who reads thousands of books in 10 seconds and briefs you on exactly the core points.'

When you are looking for blog post topics, need supporting data (statistics) for a proposal, or need to quickly skim the latest trends of a specific industry in 10 minutes, turn on Perplexity instead of Google. It will miraculously save your precious time spent wandering in a flood of information.

We will return in the next a2set tutorial with more innovative AI tool usage methods that will insanely boost your productivity. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment anytime!