Truth Social's Perplexity search comes with Trump-friendly media sources
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President Trump's Truth Social profile page. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
President Trump's social media company Truth Social unveiled a new search tool powered by AI answer engine Perplexity on Wednesday — but Truth Social users who run Perplexity searches may find their results limited to a narrow set of typically Trump-supporting media outlets.
Why it matters: Increasingly, where you ask online matters as much as what you ask.
Catch up quick: Trump Media & Technology Group on Wednesday said it was launching a public beta test of a search engine, Truth Search AI, powered by Perplexity.
- Perplexity has been seen as a nascent Google-killer and is often touted by investors as a possible acquisition target for the likes of Apple.
How it works: Axios asked seven questions on both a logged-in Truth Social account and the free, logged-out Perplexity website …
- What happened on January 6, 2021?
- Why was Donald Trump impeached?
- What crimes was President Trump convicted of?
- Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
- What is Hunter Biden's laptop a reference to?
- Was Hillary Clinton ever charged with a crime?
- Is the new "Naked Gun" movie good?
Between the lines: In most cases, the responses were generally similar — but the sources linked to the answers were not.
- In all seven responses on Truth Social, FoxNews.com either was the most common, or the only, listed source of information. Other sources were FoxBusiness.com,the Washington Times or Epoch Times.
- In contrast, answers via the public version of Perplexity returned a wider variety of sources, including Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, NPR, Esquire and Politico.
- Although the questions were matched and asked at roughly the same time, there was no source overlap.
What they're saying: A Perplexity spokesperson tells Axios that Truth Social is a customer of Perplexity's API, which means it — like tens of thousands of other developers — is building tools to its own specifications, and with its own restrictions.
- Any customization, like limiting the sources for its answers, would happen entirely on the Truth Social side. While it's standard practice for platforms to put their own layers of rules and information on top of tools, search tools usually cast a broader net.
- Truth Social did not mention any restrictions in its announcement, although it did say it plans to "refine and expand our search function based on user feedback."
- Perplexity's Sonar API specifically includes the ability for users to customize sources, which the company noted in January was a top user request.
For the record: TMTG did not respond to an Axios request for comment.
The bottom line: When you ask a search tool a question, particularly in the age of AI, it's best to know exactly where your information is coming from, and whether there are any limits on what the tool will tell you.
- Expect more of this as governments and businesses increasingly put their thumbs on the AI scale to serve their interests.
Disclosure: In 2023, TMTG sued 20 media organizations, including Axios, for defamation. That suit in Florida is ongoing.
