Perplexity says its AI personal shopper ‘puts you first’
As the holiday shopping season approaches, Perplexity is enhancing its AI shopping experience, joining the ranks of tech giants like OpenAI and Google. The company has launched a free AI-powered shopping feature tailored for U.S. users, designed to streamline the shopping process. This innovative tool allows users to input their desired products and refine their searches through follow-up questions, similar to the shopping functionalities seen in ChatGPT. The results are presented in an organized card format, showcasing product specifications, reviews, and direct purchasing options through merchants that partner with PayPal, ensuring a seamless shopping experience.
One of the standout features of Perplexity’s AI shopping assistant is its ability to remember past interactions, enhancing personalized recommendations. For instance, if a user searches for a jacket suitable for ferry commutes across San Francisco, the assistant will retain this context to provide tailored suggestions when the user later inquires about boots. Currently, this feature is accessible via desktop and web, with mobile versions for iOS and Android expected to launch in the coming weeks. This capability aims to create a more engaging and intuitive shopping journey, contrasting sharply with traditional search engines that often fall short in delivering personalized results.
Perplexity’s announcement also critiques conventional search methods and editorial platforms that prioritize affiliate revenue over genuine product matches. The company emphasizes that online shopping should focus on the enjoyment of discovery rather than mere speed. By leveraging its AI assistants—referred to as agents—Perplexity aims to understand user intent and preferences, acting as an extension of the user’s natural shopping behavior. This approach not only enhances the shopping experience but also addresses concerns raised by industry experts about the challenges of maintaining customer relationships in an increasingly automated retail landscape. Through its “Instant Buy” partnership with PayPal, Perplexity seeks to empower merchants to cultivate meaningful connections with customers, reminiscent of the direct interactions they would have on their own platforms.
Perplexity is ramping up its AI shopping experience going into the holiday season, just like
OpenAI
and
Google
, with a
free AI-powered shopping feature
that is available now to US users. Its AI assistant looks similar to what we’ve seen from ChatGPT’s shopping research, as users type in what they’re looking for and refine the results with follow-up questions. The recommended products show up as cards with specs and reviews, and users can buy products directly through Perplexity from merchants that support PayPal.
If you ask for a jacket to wear on your commute by ferry across the Bay to San Francisco, Perplexity says the chatbot will remember this past interaction to inform its recommendation when you later ask for boots. It’s available now on the desktop and web, with mobile access via iOS and Android due in “the coming weeks.”
Perplexity says its “Instant Buy” partnership with PayPal allows merchants to stay in the retail loop and build relationships with customers, “just as they would on their own sites,” perhaps as a way to address what
The Verge
EIC Nilay Patel
has
described as “the DoorDash problem.”
Perplexity’s announcement post takes digs at search bars that it says “fail at exploration” and editorial outlets that “prioritize affiliate revenue over matching readers to the exact products they’ll love” (maybe you could take a look at our Black Friday guide and see how it measures up?). Online shopping, Perplexity says, tends to focus on speedy checkouts, “not the joy” of shopping. Instead, Perplexity says its AI assistants, also called agents by other companies, “understand intent, remember preferences, and act as extensions of how users would approach a task on their own.”
