Pages - Perplexity.ai’s hidden superpower
Perplexity.ai has a well-earned reputation as a reliable, source-citing AI search tool. (If you’re not familiar with Perplexity.ai, check out my earlier article on it.) But, its most powerful feature might be one you haven’t heard of — Pages.
Here’s why Pages matters: AI chat sessions are often messy, rambling affairs that are full of false starts, fruitless diversions, and clarifying questions. Maybe it’s just me, but “meandering” is an understatement for my chats — they’re not something I want to share with colleagues or students. Perplexity Pages solves this by letting you transform raw chat sessions into well-organized, professional web pages. In minutes you can create shareable resources for your students or colleagues, all properly sourced and cited and cleanly formatted. This simply isn’t possible with any other AI chatbot.
Not much has been written about Perplexity Pages, but this (kind of) hidden feature pushes Perplexity up my top-tools list. Perplexity will convert any of your threads (chat sessions) to a Perplexity page at the literal click of a button (which is in the upper left corner of the page).
It’s pretty amazing. In about 30 seconds, you have a page that you can easily edit and share. Once the page is created, you can edit it by adding new sections through additional prompts, adding media, editing headlines, and more. One nice feature is that the different sections of your page can be more or less concise (or in Perplexity’s terms, concise or detailed). Concise sections are about a paragraph long while detailed sections include multiple paragraphs. You can rearrange and delete sections.
Once you’re happy with your page, click Publish and it’s publicly available. Here’s a link to a page I created on Generative AI in Higher Ed: https://www.perplexity.ai/page/generative-ai-in-higher-educat-TGaE_x6WS82gqxj_ieJn7Q. The entire process took less than 30 minutes. The only editing I did was to add a banner image and to change a few sections from concise to detailed.
The page looks nice and includes a useful navigation section on the left. It’s easy to go edit the page even after it’s been published. The pages are publicly available. I’ve actually gotten some random views on pages I created on Education 5.0 and Theories of Color Deficiency, which is kind of cool.
Pages solves several common challenges in higher ed knowledge sharing. For faculty, it transforms messy class notes into polished study guides in minutes — complete with citations and clear organization. Instead of struggling with Word documents and LMS oddities, you can quickly create and update course resources that students can easily access and navigate. Need a quick-reference guide for a complex topic? Just use Perplexity Pages. The Education 5.0 and Color Deficiency Pages are good examples.
Administrators can use Pages to make policies more accessible and understandable. Rather than navigating an incomprehensible mess of PDFs, students, faculty, and staff can go to an easy-to-follow Perplexity Page to find the policy they need. IT departments can transform technical documentation into user-friendly guides, complete with clear navigation.
One of the most exciting applications is having students create their own Pages as learning activities. They practice their critical thinking and research skills while learning generative AI and creating useful resources for their peers.
Think about it — In a short period of time, you can create useful resource for your team, your students, or the public. No programming required. When I teach undergrad students next year, I’m going to try out Perplexity Pages as a way to add easily-accessible supplementary material. I might even assign students to do the same.
If you haven’t checked out Perplexity, you should. It’s currently occupying a relatively unique spot in the AI market, although ChatGPT’s new search function is encroaching. Perplexity Pages adds to an already strong appeal.