For the past several months, I’ve set Perplexity—a newish, conversational search engine powered by generative A.I.—as the default on all my devices. Rather than responding to search queries with a cascade of endless links, it offers conversational responses based on search results, and weaves in citations. It’s basically like having a text chat with a brilliant research assistant, someone who enables you to go deeper on a topic more quickly. In my short time using Perplexity, I’ve become convinced that generative A.I. services like this one are not only the future of web search, but will profoundly alter our collective relationship to the internet and information itself.