Perplexity Labs Launched With Ability to Generate Spreadsheets, Reports and Create Web Apps

Perplexity Labs, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature within the Perplexity platform, was introduced on Thursday. The company says the new mode can turn text prompts into full-fledged projects such as reports, spreadsheets, and even simple web apps. Perplexity Labs uses deep web browsing and code execution, to perform complex tasks that were so far beyond the scope of the platform. The new feature comes a month after the San Francisco-based AI firm released the Perplexity Assistant for iOS.

Perplexity Labs Takes Roughly 10 Minutes to Complete a Task

The company says that Perplexity Labs is an enhanced version of Deep Research, and it is currently available to all Perplexity Pro subscribers. The latter generates comprehensive answers to complex queries that typically require multiple searches. The new feature, with the use of several specific tools and by spending more time on the task, can also take actions and execute commands to generate documents and web apps.

Perplexity Labs can perform deep web browsing, code execution, chart creation, and image creation, as per the company. The company did not specify if these are agentic tools, and if the new feature supports a multi-agent workflow. It also did not reveal if separate large language models (LLMs) were powering capabilities like image creation and code execution.

The company says that Perplexity Labs can write and execute code to perform tasks such as structuring data, applying formulas, and creating charts and documents. Any documents, code files, charts, and images created during the task are added to a separate Assets tab. Users can view and download these files from there. There's also an App tab that enables creation of basic dashboards, slideshows, and websites.

The description of the feature does make it sound like an agentic capability. Perplexity says it can take 10 minutes or more to complete “self-supervised” tasks. While users can see the chain-of-thought (CoT), it is unclear if they can also pause or interrupt the AI to edit the initial prompt or change the direction of the outcome.

The company also shared examples of tasks that Perplexity Labs can handle. These include creating a trading strategy around a specific stock or event, generating a genre-blended film concept with a visual storyboard and screenplay, creating company profiles, or generating comparative data visualisations.