But they are used like search engine... A lot... That is a huge issue.

They do have search functionality. For Perplexity it's even the main focus. Yeah, it's hard to stop them from confidently making things up.

Google and to some extent Micro$oft (and Amazon) have all sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into this bullshit technidiocy because they want AI to go out and suck up all the data on the Internet and then come back to (google or wherever) and present it as if it's "common knowledge".

Thereby rendering all authoritative (read; human, expensive) sources unnecessary.

Search and making human workers redundant has always been the goal of AI.

AI does not understand what any words mean. AI does not understand what the word "word" means. It was never going to work. It's been an insanity money pit from day one. This simple fact is only now beginning to leak out because they can't hide it anymore.

Tell that to the companies slowly replacing conventional search with AI.

AI search is a game-changer for those companies. It keeps you on their site instead of clicking away. So they retain your attention, and needn’t share any of the economic benefit with the sources that make it possible.

And when we criticize the quality of the results, who’s gonna hold them accountable for nonsense? “It’s just a tool, after all”, they say, Caveat emptor!”

Nevermind that they have a financial incentive to yield results that avoid disrespecting your biases, and offer no more than a homeopathic dose of utility — to keep you searching but never finding.

It’s a sprawling problem, that stems from the lack of protections around monopoly power, the attention economy, cribbing off other people’s work, and misinformation.

Your comment is technically correct. “You’re using the wrong tool” is a valid footnote. But it’s not the crux of the issue.

Except Perplexity, which is indeed a search engine.. which might explain why it does so well there.