On top of that, he claims that Pearl is much less likely to provide misinformation than many other AI search engines, which he believes will likely face “a tidal wave” of lawsuits based on the bad answers they give. “Those other players are building amazing technologies. I call them Ferraris or Lamborghinis,” says Kurtzig. “We are building a Volvo: safety first.”
This argument about Pearl’s superiority, of course, made me even more eager to try it. Kurtzig seemed so confident that Pearl would continue to enjoy the protections of Section 230. I asked the AI if he agreed.
Pearl said it probably qualifies as an “interactive computer service” under Section 230, which would mean it would be protected from being treated as a publisher, as Kurtzig suspected. But, the AI continued, “Pearl’s situation is unique because it generates content using AI.” After all, he didn’t have a definitive answer for me.
When I asked to speak directly to a lawyer, I was redirected to JustAnswer, where I was asked to provide the answer I wanted to verify. I said I needed to go back and copy the response since it was several paragraphs long, but when I returned to Pearl’s website the conversation had disappeared and reset to a new chat.
When I tried again, this time opening the Pearl browser on the desktop, I received an equally uncertain response. I decided to activate a human fact check; After several minutes, I received the TrustScore™: a measly 3!
Pearl recommended that I seek the opinion of a real expert and refer me to her subscription page. They gave me a login so I didn’t have to pay while I tested the tool. He then put me in touch with one of his “legal eagle” experts.
Unfortunately, the lawyer’s answers were no clearer than the AI’s. He noted that there was an ongoing legal debate about how Section 230 will apply to AI search engines and other AI tools, but when I asked him to provide specific arguments, he gave a strange response, noting that “most use shell companies or associations to submit applications. “
When I asked him for an example of one of those shell companies (quite confused about what that has to do with a public debate about Section 230), the “legal eagle” asked me if I wanted him to put together a package. Even more confused, I said yes. I got a pop-up window stating that my expert wanted to charge me an additional $165 to dig up the information.
I declined, frustrated.
I then asked Pearl about the history of WIRED. The AI response was helpful, although it’s basically the same thing you’ll find on Wikipedia. When I asked about their TrustScore™, I was once again met with a 3, which suggested it wasn’t a very good answer. I selected the option to connect with another human expert. This time, possibly because it was a question about the media and not a simple legal or medical topic, it took a while for the expert to appear: more than 20 minutes. When he did, the expert (it was never established what gave him his media bona fides, although his profile indicated he had been working with JustAnswer since 2010) gave me a remarkably AI-like answer. Since I was doing a free trial, it didn’t matter, but I would have been upset if I had paid the subscription fee only to get the same mediocre response from both a human and an AI.
In my last attempt to use the service, I answered a simple question: how to refinish kitchen floors. This time things went much better. The AI returned an appropriate response, similar to a transcript of a very basic YouTube tutorial. When I asked the human expert to assign me a TrustScore™, they gave it a 5. It seemed pretty accurate, for sure. But as someone who really wants to redo the old pine boards in my kitchen with her own hands, I think when I really look for guidance, I’ll rely on other online communities of human voices, the ones that don’t charge $28 a month: YouTube and Reddit.
If you end up trying Pearl or any other novel AI search product and have a memorable experience, let me know how it went in the comments below the article. You can also contact me by email at kate_knibbs@wired.com. Thanks for reading and stay warm!