Perplexity adds instant cards for weather and math

If you use Perplexity as your daily driver, you’ve probably felt that slight annoyance when looking up simple facts. You ask the AI for a deep dive on a niche topic, but the second you need the weather or a currency conversion, you still open Google.

Now, the AI search engine is finally fixing that.

Instant answer cards take on Google

Perplexity is rolling out interactive cards that directly answer factual queries like local weather, current time, currency conversions, and basic math.

The startup could technically answer these queries before, but it used to crawl the web and spit out a wordy, descriptive paragraph. The new update adds visual flair to present the answers instantly.

On X, CEO Aravind Srinivas noted that these basic queries should now run significantly faster. Last year, Srinivas admitted that Google handles basic queries like weather, time, and live sports scores exceptionally well, acknowledging that Perplexity had catching up to do.

To power these visual formats, Srinivas revealed last month that Perplexity has been working with Tako, an AI search startup specializing in visualizing data like stock prices.

The copyright friction behind zero-click answers

Notably, on these new weather and currency cards, Perplexity does not link to any original sources.

That choice comes at a delicate time for the Amazon-backed startup, which is facing mounting pushback from digital publishers. Earlier this month, Forbes executive editor John Paczkowski called out Perplexity for ripping off original, paywalled reporting regarding former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s drone company.

Forbes pointed out that Perplexity’s new Pages feature republished near-identical wording without proper attribution, and even highlighted the reporting in an AI-generated podcast. Critics argue that scraping media content without backlinks or ad traffic threatens publishers' underlying business model.

In response to the heat, Perplexity chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko told Semafor last week that the company is exploring revenue-sharing deals with publishers to provide them with recurring income.

Why it matters

For power users, this is a welcome quality-of-life update. Being able to check quick math or the temperature without juggling between an AI chatbot and a traditional search tab makes Perplexity feel closer to a true browser default.

Looking at the broader search landscape, Perplexity is essentially retracing Google's footsteps. Years ago, Google shifted from ten blue links to rich OneBox cards to keep searchers on its own results page. Now, generative AI search engines are realizing that conversational text isn't always the best interface, sometimes people just want a clean widget.

We think adding quick visual utility is a smart retention play, but it also sharpens the startup's biggest existential risk. Zero-click answers eliminate publisher traffic entirely. While basic currency conversions don't carry copyright, Perplexity’s broader habit of summarizing web content without delivering referral traffic is alienating the very publishers it relies on. Exploring revenue sharing seems like a necessary defense, but until those deals materialize, Perplexity's all-in-one ambitions will remain on a collision course with original reporting.