Perplexity AI is “experimenting with advertising” in an effort to build a sustainable AI business, while giving partners and publishers a way to make money.

Perplexity AI has emerged as a significant threat to Google Search, using AI to provide answers. Like all AI companies, however, the company is looking to future to chart a path toward profitability. The company addresses that issue in its explanation for why it’s experimenting with ads.

To fully deliver on our mission to spark the world’s curiosity, we need to invest in building not just a beloved product, but a robust and self-sustaining business. That’s why starting this week, we will begin experimenting with ads on Perplexity.

The company first assures users that it will remain true to a basic guiding principle.

The content of the answers you receive on Perplexity will not be influenced by advertisers. Users come to Perplexity for a more efficient, uncluttered, and unbiased search experience, and that isn’t changing.

Perplexity says ads will be clearly identified as “sponsored,” and that answers in Sponsored Questions will still be generated by the company’s AI, not dictated, created, or edited by the advertisers. A significant benefit of this approach is that it prevents the platform from devolving into a recreation of the SEO market, where companies can easily game the system keyword packing.

While brands are keen on understanding how their companies appear in AI answer engines like ours, we will avoid duplicating the SEO industry where people are implementing arbitrary tactics to improve their rankings at the expense of user utility. We would rather give brands a transparent way to advertise through Perplexity that — rather than attempting to manipulate answers — encourages users to express their curiosity about a brand.

Ad programs like this help us generate revenue to share with our publisher partners. Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. Especially given how rapidly our publisher program is growing, advertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream.

The company again highlights principles it promises to abide by.

This is an experiment and formats may evolve, but two principles will always remain true: (1) These ads will not change our commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides you with direct, unbiased answers to your questions, and (2) we will never share your personal information with advertisers. Our advertising approach is designed to complement the Perplexity experience.

Only time will tell if Perplexity’s experiment is successful, but it seems the company is taking a measured approach and will hopefully live up to its promises.