Snapchat’s buying another ticket for the AI hype train, with the company today announcing a new deal with Perplexity AI that will see Perplexity’s conversational chatbot integrated into Snapchat, adding another way for Snapchatters to engage with AI tools.
Perplexity is another variation of a ChatGPT-like interface, enabling you to ask questions of the chatbot, and have it generate responses based on web sources.
Reviews suggest that Perplexity is actually better than ChatGPT for research and accuracy, because of its focus as an "answer engine." But essentially, it’s the same concept, in a different form.
Perplexity claims to answer more than 150 million questions each week.
And soon, Snapchatters will be able to pose questions to Perplexity AI in-stream, providing another way to seek out accurate, timely answers to various questions.
As explained by Snap:
“Starting in early 2026, Perplexity will appear in the popular Chat interface for Snapchatters around the world. Through this integration, Perplexity’s AI-powered answer engine will let Snapchatters ask questions and get clear, conversational answers drawn from verifiable sources, all within Snapchat.”
So how is that different from Snap’s “My AI” chatbot, which is also available in the Chat interface?
Interestingly, according to Snapchat’s Help Center:
“My AI is powered by Large Language Models like GPT models from OpenAI and Gemini models from Google and has been trained on a diverse range of texts, with additional safety enhancements and controls unique to Snapchat.”
So, theoretically at least, you’ll be able to compare the answers from both AI tools within your Snap inbox, by asking the same question of both, and seeing what they return. So, again, reviews suggest that Perplexity is better for research, but if both it and a GPT-powered AI bot are available, you don’t have to settle for either.
That is, of course, if My AI stays.
Presumably it will. Snap notes that both options will be available in its announcement, so it is seemingly planning to offer two AI chatbots in-stream. But then again, with two AI chatbots, as well as “Sponsored Snaps” appearing in your Snap DMs, things could get a little crowded, which could annoy some users.
But that appears to be what Snap’s going with thus far, and there’s good reason why Snap’s looking to add Perplexity in. Snapchat says that Perplexity will be paying it $400 million to have Perplexity appear in Snapchatter inboxes for one year.
So, yeah, things might get crowded, but at that price, Snap will deal with that problem when it comes up.
As noted, Snapchat says the Perplexity AI bot will become available on Snap sometime in the new year.
