• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

The search engine Perplexity is attempting to make an impact in the email field by launching a new product called Email Assistant.   

This is apparently less a marketing tool than an artificial intelligence agent “that behaves as your personal/executive assistant on your email client (Gmail, Outlook); scheduling meetings, prioritizing emails, and drafting replies for you,” Perplexity says in a recent announcement. 

It is now available to all Perplexity Max subscribers.

“Know what needs a reply and what's FYI,” Perplexity says on its web site. “Email assistant automatically tags emails so you can focus on what matters. In addition, the new feature allows the user to turn their inbox into “scheduled meetings, drafted replies, and clear priorities." The subscriber can start their day by getting “summaries of meetings, key emails, and daily priorities right from Perplexity.”

Perplexity Email Assistant “categorizes your emails into different buckets using labels so you can focus on the ones that need your immediate attention.”

To address the issue of and concerns around data security, Perplexity uses “enterprise-grade encryption for all data transmission and storage," it states in its announcement.

Perplexity has faced numerous allegations that the company scrapes content without permission, and has been sued by Japanese newspaper publishers and by Britannica/Merriam-Webster. 

“Your emails are never used to train models,” the company asserts on its site. “We comply with GDPR and SOC-2 privacy regulations.”