Popular AI search engine Perplexity is rolling out new shopping tools that it hopes will make its service a destination for product recommendations — and maybe even actual purchases. The startup is also introducing a visual search feature in its app that lets its paid users snap a photo of an item to find similar goods — similar to the “Lens” products offered by Google and Pinterest. like
The new tools, announced Monday, are part of a larger push by Perplexity to become more of a one-stop hub for consumers and turn 100 million weekly search queries into business. The effort marks another attempt by the company to challenge search leader Google, which has been adding AI-powered shopping tools to its search results in recent months.
Frustrated users who enter a question in the new search experience, such as “What’s the best coffee machine under $500?”, are shown a top product recommendation as the answer, and its positive attributes. with a brief explanatory summary. Below that, the AI system displays a few rectangular tiles, each showing another recommended product with important information like product images and prices. In some cases, shoppers will be able to easily purchase one of the recommended items after a few taps through integration with e-commerce software company Shopify and its ShopPay checkout system.
For Perplexity Pro subscription customers, the company also offers the ability to complete purchases directly within the AI search engine and receive free shipping.
But for merchants, retailers, and brands or even consumers who want to understand how the company’s AI decides which products to recommend, the startup’s CEO admitted bluntly. That they don’t have an answer. At least not yet.
“All these things have yet to be fully understood, to be very honest with you, in terms of how the rankings work. [and why] Arvind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, stated that AI is prioritizing classification over each other. good luck In an exclusive interview on Monday. “Is it the number of reviews? Are the ratings accurate and where are the ratings coming from — like what people are saying about their products on different platforms? There’s a lot of distillation and condensation going on here. “
“I think we don’t fully understand it ourselves today,” he added, echoing comments from executives at many other companies about their AI findings.
The goal and expectation, though, is that Perplexity will eventually get there, the CEO said.
In an example of a common question in Monday’s press announcement—about a sub-$500 coffee machine—the results highlighted the “Brewle Bambino Plus” espresso machine as the top choice, along with a few bullet points explaining the decision. . Perplexity then includes a product tile that displays the merchandise’s key features, along with similar product cards for two other “recommended products” with roughly the same price.
Some users may find the result a little off target. Technically, a coffee machine is not the same thing as an espresso machine.
Breville Brand Top Choice’s product card has a Best Buy link where shoppers can find more details. It also features a “Buy with Pro” button that allows Perplexity Pro users to enter their shipping and credit card information and purchase the item through Perplexity. Best Buy, however, isn’t actually partnering with Perplexity in this instance. Rather, the startup is placing the order with Best Buy on behalf of the customer, and then covering any shipping costs as an incentive for shoppers to try the new Perplexity shopping tools.
While search platforms like Google and Pinterest both previously experimented with letting their customers complete some purchases directly on their platforms, both Internet giants eventually shut down those capabilities, in part because retail Vendors don’t like to be dispersed.
Perplexity is simultaneously opening a merchant program that it hopes will help it build direct relationships with major retailers to feed their product data into the AI system and potentially Perplexity customers. Let’s buy your stuff directly in the search engine. Srinivas said his startup will not take any cut or commission on any resulting sales.
While Srinivas said he doesn’t fully understand how his company’s AI system directs shoppers to certain products, it seems one factor in particular may play a role. Retailers who provide data to Perplexity as part of its new free merchant program will increase their chances of being a “Recommended Product” because the products will be in our index, and when we have more robust details, So we can better determine if a product is of high quality and relevant to a user’s query,” says Monday’s press release.
Perplexity recently announced an experiment with advertising for its core search product in the form of sponsored “follow-up questions” — relevant questions that an AI system creates and displays below search results aimed at Encourage users to delve deeper into the topic.
“Incorporating sponsored questions into the shopping experience was a natural choice for us to explore,” he said. good luck. “It can be a very good way to create demand and meet it there.”
However, retailers and brands will not be able to pay to recommend their products, Srinivas said.
(good luck Perplexity is a member of the Publishers’ Program. As part of the program, the startup shares ad revenue with publications when their content is used or referenced in a Perplexity answer to a sponsored question.)
The new shopping assistant-style experience comes as existing general-purpose search engines like Google, as well as new specialized search startups like Daydream, use gen AI systems to make it easier for consumers to find new products online. How to find out Google recently added AI summaries and recommendations to its shopping search tools. Amazon and Walmart have also added AI shopping recommendation tools to their marketplaces, with the former recently developing an assistant called Rufus that was trained on the e-commerce company’s large product catalog and database of customer reviews. is
So will Perplexity’s new shopping tools pull information or signals from Amazon’s review catalog as well? Srinivas’ answer was not clear.
“I’m not entirely sure in which cases they are accessible or not accessible,” he said.
As Perplexity begins to move into a new space, it’s fair to wonder whether users should still expect to be bombarded with the “deceptions” — or errors — that many general AI products produce. If the answer to the one question I asked this morning about anxiety — “Can you show me your new shopping experience?” — is there any indication, then the answer might be yes.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t actually have a new shopping experience to show you,” replied the perplexity search system. “I’m an AI assistant created by Anthropic to be helpful, harmless and honest. I don’t have my own shopping platform or experience.” (Perplexity’s AI system relies in part on Anthropic, a separate AI company, for the large language models that generate some of the answers that generate its search tools.)
Perplexity’s response then highlighted recent experiences with AI-powered product discovery including Google, Amazon, and Walmart.
