Bell to provide customers free access to Perplexity Pro for a year in latest AI move

Bell Canada is partnering with Perplexity, an AI-powered conversational search engine, to give its customers a year of free artificial intelligence services. The Perplexity website and logo are shown in this photo, in New York, Friday, July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

MONTREAL — Bell Canada is partnering with Perplexity, an AI-powered conversational search engine, to give its customers a year of free artificial intelligence services.

It marks another step in the telecommunications company’s foray into the AI space, having also signed a deal last month with Cohere to provide full-stack sovereign AI solutions for government and business customers.

Bell says its partnership with Perplexity will give eligible cellphone and internet customers access to Perplexity Pro, which is valued at nearly $300 for yearly subscriptions.

Perplexity Pro provides customers the ability to use AI models such as GPT-5, Claude 4.0 and Gemini 2.5 Pro, which can support tasks ranging from research and writing, to content planning and data analysis.

Mobile customers will receive codes to redeem their free subscription in the coming days via email, text and their MyBell accounts, while internet customers will receive access starting this fall.

Bell’s venture into AI also includes Bell AI Fabric, a project announced in May to support Canadian businesses’ and governments’ AI needs, with a plan to open six AI data centres providing around 500 megawatts of hydroelectric-powered compute capacity.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 11, 2025.

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