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Title: Perplexity Announces 'Computer,' an AI Agent That Assigns Work To
Other AI Agent

Link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/27/2151236/p...

joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced
"Computer," a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried
out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The
company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max
subscribers, is "a system that creates and executes entire workflows" and
"capable of running for hours or even months." The idea is that the user
describes a specific outcome -- something like "plan and execute a local
digital marketing campaign for my restaurant" or "build me an Android app
that helps me do a specific kind of research for my job." Computer then
ideates subtasks and assigns them to multiple agents as needed, running the
models Perplexity deems best for those tasks. The core reasoning engine
currently runs Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, while Gemini is used for deep
research, Nano Banana for image generation, Veo 3.1 for video production,
Grok for lightweight tasks where speed is a consideration, and ChatGPT 5.2
for "long-context recall and wide search." This kind of best-model-for-the-
task approach differs from some competing products like Claude Cowork, which
only uses Anthropic's models. All this happens in the cloud, with prebuilt
integrations. "Every task runs in an isolated compute environment with access
to a real filesystem, a real browser, and real tool integrations," Perplexity
says. The idea is partly that this workflow was what some power users were
already doing, and this aims to make that possible for a wider range of
people who don't want to deal with all that setup. People were already using
multiple models and tailoring them to specific tasks based on perceived
capabilities, while, for example, using MCP (Model Context Protocol) to give
those models access to data and applications on their local machines.
Perplexity Computer takes a different approach, but the goal is the same:
have AI agents running tailor-picked models to perform tasks involving your
own files, services, and applications. Then there is OpenClaw, which you
could perceive as the immediate predecessor to this concept.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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