Perplexity (hopes to) join US government discount AI fest • The Register

Perplexity has entered the race to inject AI into the federal government with a new public sector version of its AI search engine, another AI discount, and a pledge to start enforcing new security measures for government-related use, which weren’t applied by default until now. 

Perplexity announced its new Enterprise Pro for Government offering on Monday, along with plans to better protect government users who are, according to the company, already making extensive use of the consumer version of Perplexity’s AI search engine. 

“Perplexity is proud to already serve thousands of U.S. federal employees each day,” the company said. That use appears to be via the publicly available version of Perplexity, as we couldn’t locate any public contracts with the US government in contracting databases. Perplexity also doesn’t appear on the FedRAMP Marketplace, which means its cloud services aren’t yet authorized for federal use.

Perplexity called out public AI tools for being unsafe for the government in its press release, but also admitted that it is one of the public tools being used for government workers without explicit permission from their agencies, or protections for sensitive data.

“Today, most AI use within government is facilitated not through subscription-based products, but rather via publicly available web tools,” the company said. “These public tools offer scant protection for agency data.” 

Perplexity didn’t respond to questions for this story, including one asking whether it had support for the claim that most government AI usage is essentially unauthorized. Nonetheless, it appears that Perplexity’s public tools, like many others, may previously have processed government-related data in ways that weren’t restricted from training.

“When federal users interact with [public AI] tools, their interactions are typically reused by the developer for model training and other undisclosed purposes,” Perplexity noted in its press release. 

“Starting today, Perplexity will automatically enforce zero data usage on all requests that we identify as originating from a U.S. government agency,” the company added, raising the question of what it was doing before. 

Along with pledging not to train on government data, Perplexity says it will elevate requests it detects from US government networks to its most advanced models. The changes, effective Monday, apply automatically with no subscription required.

Yet more discount government AI

Speaking of formal approval, the new Perplexity Enterprise Pro for Government product that the company announced on Monday doesn’t appear to be deployment-ready, as (like other Perplexity products) there’s no sign it has received FedRAMP approval or that the company has finalized a deal with the General Services Administration (GSA). 

Specifics of what Enterprise Pro for Government will offer weren’t mentioned in the press release, with the product only described in terms similar to Perplexity’s standard Enterprise product, which is able to integrate organizational data into AI search results. The government version is “a custom edition adapted to [government agencies’] unique requirements,” Perplexity added.

Whenever the deal is finalized, expect it to look like the other IT contracts GSA has signed under its OneGov initiative in the past few months. Those deals have centered around Multiple Award Schedule contracts that have allowed government agencies to acquire AI tools at deep discounts without having to negotiate their own terms.

OpenAI and Anthropic, for example, signed deals in August that gave US government agencies access to their tools for $1 for a year. Google signed its own deal to offer Gemini to the government for $0.47 valid through 2026, while Microsoft recently decided to give agencies Copilot at no cost for up to 12 months for Microsoft G5 customers, and Box has cut its own AI deal with GSA as well. Other deals have been cut by Oracle and AWS to offer discounts on their services as well. 

Perplexity plans to offer Enterprise Pro for Government for $0.25 for 15 months as part of its pending OneGov deal. As with the rest, it’s not clear what terms government agencies will be left with once the discount period expires. The GSA didn’t respond to questions for this story. ®