Perplexity introduces Labs: a new tool that creates spreadsheets, dashboards and web apps

Generative artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity AI Inc. announced a new tool Thursday that allows users to produce anything from complex reports and spreadsheets, to dashboards and web apps, all backed with extensive research.

The new tool, called Perplexity Labs, can take about 10 minutes or more of self-supervised work and use third-party tools such as deep web browsing, code execution and generate charts, images and other assets.

The company is best known for its flagship search product, which provides rich answers from web searches in paragraph form, including citations, and allows users to input conversational-style English prompts. Perplexity also released Deep Research, which can take a few minutes — two to three, on average — to come back with long, well-researched documents after performing dozens of in-depth searches and reading hundreds of sources. Perplexity described it as a “dedicated answer machine available to you 24/7.”

Under the hood, Labs employs AI agents that can handle tasks such as structuring data, applying formulas, creating charts, text documents, spreadsheets, basic dashboards and even generate small websites. All of this is available without the need for development tools.

The company has made available a variety of potential examples in a Project Gallery that includes a number of starters. Examples include creating interactive educational maps from the Pacific War theater in the 1940s with detailed graphics, producing a dashboard for five-year performance for a traditional stock portfolio compared with an AI-powered portfolio, and a product designer for a “futuristic social media platform made for the year 2030.”

To create apps, users can navigate to the “App” tab, the company said, which allows for the creation of simple dashboards, slideshows and interactive websites.

All of the assets generated during a session with Labs are available in an “Assets” tab and available for download. This includes images, charts, CSV files and code.

Labs is available starting today for subscribers to Perplexity’s premium Pro plan, who can start working with the new mode from the input bar on web, iOS and Android devices. The company said the mode will arrive soon on its MacOS and Windows apps.

Image: Perplexity