Understanding the Roles of GPT-4o Mini and Sonar Models in Perplexity
Hi everyone! I have a conceptual question related to the Perplexity search step. I tried to find the answer on my own but didn’t have much luck. In this step, we can select two different models. The first dropdown (using the GPT-4o Mini model) says it "Sends a query to Perplexity AI and gets a response with real-time information and citations". The second one (using the Sonar Reasoning model) allows us to select "The Perplexity model to use for the chat. For more information see Perplexity's documentation." My question is: which of these two models is actually responsible for performing the search and the reasoning? Based on the descriptions, it seems like the first one handles both the search and reasoning, while the second one is just used to phrase or format the answer. Is that correct? I'm asking because in Perplexity’s documentation, it says that the Sonar model performs better on topic summaries and simple information retrieval, while Sonar Reasoning is better for complex analyses requiring step-by-step thinking. Since we use this Perplexity step to research leads and assign them a score, I assume Sonar Reasoning would be the better choice. But I’m not sure if in this case, it’s actually GPT-4o Mini that’s doing the search and scoring instead. Could someone please explain the difference between the two models that need to be selected in this step? What role does each one actually play? Thank you!