This New AI Search Engine Has a Gimmick: Humans Answering Questions

January 23, 2025

(Wired) – A new AI-powered search engine called Pearl is launching today, with an unusual pitch: It promises to connect you with an actual human expert if the AI answer sucks. WIRED gave it a spin.

Big players like Google are insistent that AI is the savior of search, despite many early attempts to integrate AI ending in disaster. There’s a wave of services offering AI-powered answers, including Perplexity and OpenAI’s SearchGPT. Recently, I got an email promoting another new AI search engine—but this one has a notably quirky approach to answering questions. Called Pearl, it’s coming out of beta this week. Like other AI-powered search engines, Pearl initially answers questions by using large language models to provide answers. Then it does something unusual: It offers a human fact-check and the option to connect with experts and chat online or on the phone about the answer. (Read More)