Summary

  • Perplexity AI is investigating user reports of Android devices automatically reverting default assistant settings to Google Assistant or Gemini, raising questions about potential bugs or platform interference.
  • Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas’s X post prompted numerous users to share experiences of unexpected assistant switches, while others report no issues, indicating the problem’s scope is unclear.
  • The root cause of the reported assistant resets remains undetermined, necessitating further investigation and user feedback.

San Francisco, California-based Perplexity AI has gained solid ground since its inception in 2022, going head-to-head with the likes of Gemini and ChatGPT when it comes to AI chatbots and assistants, and Google Search when it comes to search engines.

Not only does Perplexity allow you to run its default model Sonar, it also lets you switch between GPT-4.5, GPT-4o, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0 Flash, and more. On the smartphone front, the company recently expanded into the Android voice assistant game, complete with power-button gesture support.

The Default digital assistant setting screen with Perplexity.


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Perplexity’s Android assistant debuts with live view and on-screen context support

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The AI assistant can do a lot — it is aware of on-screen context, offers live view support, which means it can detect what your phone’s camera is pointed towards, it can play music on your default service, offer summarization and writing help, and most importantly, supports action-chaining — alongside a trove of other features that we’ve come to expect from smart assistants. The Perplexity app has over 10 million downloads on Android, and rightfully so, a subset of those users have switched over to the Perplexity Assistant. However, recent reports suggest that user devices are automatically reverting to Google Assistant or Gemini (via TechIssuesToday).

For what it’s worth, this isn’t likely to be nefarious behavior on Google’s part and rather just a bug with Android and/or Perplexity, though users are, understandably, frustrated.

This isn’t a universal issue

Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas shared a post on X (Twitter), saying that he’s “hearing incidents of Google secretly switching the assistant back to Google from Perplexity without the Perplexity user’s consent.” Several users chimed in the post’s reply, with many stating that they’ve observed the behavior.

“Switches back after every update and restart. Thought it was normal!” said one user, while a different user said “Dismissed it as just some weird quirk with my phone. Nice to [know] I’m not the only one.” Such reports aren’t completely new — users have reported their device automatically switching back to Google Assistant since January and February.

The problem doesn’t seem to be universal though. I set Perplexity as the default assistant on a secondary device when I wrote about it landing on Android back on January 14. That device still defaults to Perplexity when I tap and hold the power button. Some users on Srinivas’ X post also echoed the same sentiment.

The issue has only now come into the spotlight, with potential resolutions and a call for testing to now commence.