TRUTH SOCIAL PARTNERS WITH PERPLEXITY TO LAUNCH AI SEARCH TOOL
Donald Trump’s media company has entered into a partnership with Perplexity, an AI startup, to launch a new AI-powered search tool on Truth Social. The announcement was made via a press release, confirming that users accessing Truth Social through a web browser can now search the web using the integrated AI tool. This feature, called “Truth Social AI,” is currently in public beta testing and represents the platform’s latest effort to expand its offerings.
Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media and Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, described the partnership as a strategic move to strengthen what he referred to as the “Patriot Economy.” According to the press release, the company sees the integration of Perplexity’s technology as part of its mission to challenge Big Tech and restore what it claims is lost digital freedom of expression. The tool is designed to give users the ability to retrieve search results directly through Truth Social, powered by generative AI.
Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer at Perplexity, emphasized the company’s focus on delivering accurate and transparent results. “Curiosity is the engine of change, and Perplexity’s AI is developed to empower curiosity by delivering direct, reliable answers with transparent citations,” he said in the statement. The integration brings Perplexity’s real-time search capabilities to a new user base aligned with the Truth Social platform.
ALLEGATIONS OF COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS AND CONTENT SCRAPING
Perplexity’s inclusion in the Truth Social ecosystem comes amid a series of allegations concerning its data collection practices. Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure provider, recently reported that Perplexity had used stealthy, undeclared crawlers to bypass content restrictions, accessing websites that had blocked large language models. This behavior reportedly violated industry-standard web protocols like the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows publishers to control whether their content is indexed by automated systems.
Several major media organizations have accused Perplexity of plagiarism and unauthorized use of their content. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, filed a federal lawsuit against the company in 2024, alleging that Perplexity was “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works.” Similar accusations have come from Forbes, the New York Times, and WIRED, with each outlet reporting that Perplexity’s AI summaries replicated or repurposed their original material without permission or proper attribution.
Perplexity’s origins trace back to a small demo project that scraped Twitter data using AI-generated research proposals and fake academic credentials. Despite these early practices, the company has since attracted substantial funding from high-profile investors, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and graphics processing giant Nvidia. Critics argue that Perplexity’s business model relies heavily on aggregating content it does not own, creating legal risks for itself and reputational concerns for partners like Trump Media.
TENSIONS BETWEEN PLATFORM RHETORIC AND CORPORATE ALIGNMENT
The partnership between Trump Media and Perplexity raises questions about consistency between political branding and business decisions. Trump’s digital platform has positioned itself as an alternative to mainstream tech giants, regularly accusing companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon of silencing conservative voices. However, Perplexity’s investors include figures closely tied to those same firms, creating an apparent disconnect between the platform’s stated goals and its technological partnerships.
Truth Social AI appears to function similarly to other AI-powered search interfaces, offering synthesized answers with citations. When prompted with questions about Donald Trump’s name appearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s records, the tool responded by stating that no current official documents implicate him in criminal activity, though his name appears in various public logs. On economic questions, the AI provided answers reflecting typical macroeconomic analysis, acknowledging inflation and GDP concerns while citing mixed signals in the labor market.
While ICE, copyright holders, and privacy advocates continue to monitor the behavior of generative AI tools, Perplexity’s role in government-facing or politically affiliated platforms will likely draw added scrutiny. The partnership with Truth Social exemplifies the broader trend of political media entities incorporating AI without fully resolving ethical or legal questions surrounding the underlying technology. For now, the AI search tool remains live, as Trump Media and Perplexity move forward despite ongoing controversy.