Perplexity, an AI search engine that has courted controversy by lifting liberally from news articles and skirting web-scraping rules, this week promised to serve as a reliable source for live information on the tightly contested US presidential election. Perplexity promised that its Election Information Hub would serve as "an entry point for understanding key issues, voting intelligently, and tracking election results." "There is only one AI that can do this," Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas posted on X. Srinivas appeared to troll the publisher of The New York Times by posting a message on X offering to help while Times Tech Guild workers strike during contract negotiations; he later posted that the offer was for infrastructure rather than AI-generated content. Perplexity's tool did not end up making any gaffes last night, providing mostly accurate voting information and also accurately tracking the results as they came in--but largely because it dialed down the use of AI. Perplexity is currently finalizing a funding round worth 500 million that would give the company a valuation of 9 billion, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to WIRED yesterday.

AI-powered plagiarism detection is gaining momentum. Utilizing natural language processing (NLP) technology boosted by machine learning algorithms looks like a smart approach, rather than using the traditional word-for-word match approach to detect plagiarism is what new companies such as Stamford, Connecticut-based Copyleaks are doing. This week, this company announced that it raised $6 million in Series A funding. The financing was led by the Israeli venture capital firm JAL Venture. Copyleaks said that it will use the capital raised "to expand its presence across industries, safeguard its intellectual property, and continue to provide cutting-edge AI solutions," according to a press release.