Perplexity says AI personal shopper ‘puts you first’

Perplexity is ramping up the shopping experience using AI as the holiday season approaches, just like… OpenAI and Googletogether AI-powered free shopping feature It is now available to users in the United States. Its AI assistant looks similar to what we’ve seen from ChatGPT’s shopping research, where users type in what they’re looking for and refine the results with follow-up questions. Recommended products appear as cards with specifications and reviews, and users can purchase products directly through Perplexity from PayPal-enabled merchants.

If you order a jacket to wear on your ferry ride across the bay to San Francisco, Perplexity says the chatbot will remember that previous interaction to inform its recommendation when you later order shoes. It’s available now on desktop and web, with mobile access available via iOS and Android 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 do on their own sites,” perhaps as a way to address… Edge EIC Nilay Patel has It has been described as a “DoorDash problem.”

Perplexity’s ad post takes digs at search bars that say “Fail to Explore” and editorial outlets that “prioritize affiliate revenue over matching readers with specific products they’ll love” (maybe you can take a look at our Black Friday guide and see how it measures that?). Online shopping tends to focus on quick checkouts, “not the fun” of shopping, Perplexity says. Instead, Perplexity says its AI assistants, also called agents by other companies, “understand intent, remember preferences, and act as an extension of how users approach a task on their own.”