Pinterest launches experimental AI-powered shopping app called “Ask Pinterest”

Pinterest on Wednesday announced a new beta app called “Ask Pinterest” that will allow the company to explore a more conversational approach to shopping and discovering products that could eventually find their way into the main Pinterest app. It also introduced other AI initiatives, including the Pinterest Model Context Protocol (MCP), designed for advertisers running campaigns on the Pinterest platform, and other AI-powered advertising tools.

The news comes ahead of the ad tech industry’s annual meeting at Cannes Lions, which this year mainly focuses on how AI can meet the needs of advertisers and marketers.

The online “Ask Pinterest” app gives the company another way to leverage its “Taste Graph” — its internal data that identifies people based on their interests and aesthetics. The company said it will initially be available in limited access.

The AI-powered experience is designed to expand the visual discovery experience Pinterest is known for beyond the main app to a chatbot-like conversational interface where consumers can ask questions using natural language to get more personalized recommendations and inspiration.

It also comes at a time when AI-powered chatbots are increasingly competing with traditional search engines for consumers’ attention. Google has already used artificial intelligence to work on it Help online shoppers Find what they need, track prices, And check out. ChatGPT too I tried agent shoppingas he did dead, Shopifyet al.

Instead of turning itself into a source of product recommendations that other AI services can leverage through licensing deals, Pinterest has largely focused on using its own data. To train artificial intelligence models and Powering its own AI products.

Additionally, by making Ask Pinterest a standalone app, the company has a way to experiment with the technology without disrupting the main Pinterest experience.

The company explains that Ask Pinterest can work with more complex or multi-step queries that don’t fit into traditional Pinterest search. For example, you can use the app to ask for help planning a dinner party or furnishing a room over time. The idea, Pinterest says, is to test and explore how AI can better support people’s shopping experiences while preserving user context across sessions.

Ask Pinterest can also leverage users’ saved pins and boards to personalize its answers.

The company believes these findings will, over time, help Pinterest build more AI-powered experiences for the company’s main app.

The new Pinterest app was announced alongside updates aimed at marketers, including the introduction of the AI ​​assistant, which is still in beta, in Ads Manager in the US.

A new AI model, Performance Design+, has also been introduced globally to help advertisers choose between different ad creatives to find the one most likely to perform best every time the ad is shown. The MCP infrastructure layer announced by Pinterest will allow advertisers to manage and monitor their campaigns using other third-party proxy tools in a unified manner.

In an announcement shared with the news, Lee Brown, Pinterest’s chief business officer, pointed to the changing nature of web search, noting that “the future of discovery will not be driven by keywords alone. It will be shaped by context, taste, and trusted recommendations” — an area in which Pinterest feels it has a “unique advantage,” Brown said.