Perplexity loses nearly 30% of Korean users in a year despite star-studded push

A scene from a Perplexity promotional video [Perplexity official YouTube channel]

Perplexity, once a rising star in South Korea's generative AI market, is struggling to hold its ground. Its domestic user base, which surpassed 800,000 last year, has shrunk by nearly 30% in just 12 months.

The AI search startup enlisted actor Lee Jung-jae as a brand ambassador and invested heavily in the Korean market, but the efforts have not been enough to stem user attrition amid intensifying AI competition.

According to mobile analytics firm Mobile Index, Perplexity's monthly active users in South Korea stood at 594,599 in September — a 29.1% drop from 839,098 in September last year.

The decline stands in sharp contrast to the growth of rival services over the same period. OpenAI's ChatGPT saw its Korean user base rise 40.6%, from about 12.8 million to about 17.99 million. Anthropic's Claude surged roughly 13-fold, from about 130,286 to about 1.71 million users.

Perplexity launched in South Korea in 2024, billing itself as a challenger to Google. The service lets users pose questions and receive synthesized answers drawn from live internet searches, with source citations attached. It gained traction particularly for its approach to reducing AI "hallucinations" — instances where AI generates inaccurate information — by providing clear references for every response.

The company pursued the Korean market aggressively. In September 2024, it partnered with SK Telecom to offer subscribers a free one-year subscription to its paid Perplexity Pro tier.

During that same visit to South Korea, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas met directly with Lee Jung-jae to discuss business cooperation. The following January, Artist United — the entertainment company of which Lee is the largest shareholder — announced a partnership with Perplexity to integrate AI technology into its operations.

Despite the marketing campaigns and partnership deals, the loss of nearly 30% of its Korean users within a year has prompted analysts to conclude that Perplexity's foothold in the domestic AI market is shrinking.

Industry observers say Perplexity's core selling point — accurate answers backed by cited sources — is no longer a unique advantage. As ChatGPT, Gemini and other rivals have rapidly bolstered their own source-citation features, Perplexity's differentiation has eroded.

The trend extends beyond South Korea. According to web traffic analytics firm Similarweb, Perplexity accounted for just 0.9 percent of global visits to major generative AI chatbot websites in September, down 1.6 percentage points from 2.5 percent in October last year.

Over the same period, Google's Gemini climbed 11.4 percentage points to 25.0 percent from 13.6 percent, while Anthropic's Claude expanded 7.3 percentage points to 9.6 percent from 2.3 percent.

chami@heraldcorp.com