Podqi study: Perplexity cites risky retail sites in 15% of answers

Podqi crafted its own prompts rather than using real user conversations, and ran them through a tool that tracks AI answers across chatbots over two testing periods in September. The patterns it found were uneven: Gemini surfaced risky sites least often, at 4 percent of answers, while ChatGPT sat at 8 percent and Perplexity at 15 percent. The type of question mattered too — AI displayed risky sites more often when asked about regional brand websites, and the engines at times listed fake regional sites for brands that have none. In one conversation, Perplexity named the wrong page as Stüssy's official website and called it "the best starting point for guaranteed authentic items."

Google spokesperson Jessica Levis Boord said Gemini performed best among the products tested and that links to sources are displayed alongside responses to help people verify information. OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said the company is continuing to improve safeguards to make potentially deceptive sites less likely to appear in shopping-related results. Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said Perplexity never claims to be 100% accurate but is the only company relentlessly focused on it.