AI search engine

An AI search engine answers your question in a written summary with sources, instead of only showing a list of links.

In practice: It searches the web, reads the top results and writes an answer that cites them. Perplexity, ChatGPT search and Google's AI answers work this way. Some tools can also search your own files or a specific set of sources.

Why it matters when picking a tool

AI search saves time on research but can still misread or misquote sources, so open the citations for anything important. Compare how clearly sources are shown, how current the results are, and whether you can limit it to trusted sites.