Perplexity is expanding its AI shopping experience for the holiday season, just like OpenAI and Google, with a free AI-powered shopping feature now available to US users. Its AI assistant looks similar to what we’ve seen in ChatGPT’s shopping research, as 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 merchants that support PayPal.
If you ask for a jacket to wear while traveling by ferry across the Bay to San Francisco, Perplexity says the chatbot will remember this past conversation to inform its recommendation when you later ask for shoes. It is available now on desktop and web, with mobile access via iOS and Android coming 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 like they do on their own sites,” perhaps as a way to address this. The Verge EIC Nilay Patel described it as the “DoorDash problem.”
Perplexity’s announcement post takes a dig at search bars that it says “fail at exploration” and editorial outlets that “prioritize affiliate revenue rather than matching readers with the exact products they’ll love” (perhaps you can take a look at our Black Friday guide and see how it measures up?). Perplexity says online shopping increasingly focuses on fast checkout, “not on the joy” of shopping. Instead, Perplexity says its AI assistants, which other companies also call agents, “understand intent, remember preferences, and act as an extension of how users would approach a task on their own.”
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