Better than Perplexity and Google AI Mode? Yahoo enters chat with new AI-powered search rival

Yahoo is officially entering the AI search war with its new AI-powered “answer engine” called Yahoo Scout. The new AI tool is designed to compete directly with the likes of Google’s AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT’s real-time search feature.

What is Yahoo Scout?

Yahoo said on Tuesday that Scout leverages the company’s unique data and user insights, along with over 30 years of history in search, to shift search results from links to answers and search terms to natural language queries.

The AI-powered search synthesises information from the open web, Yahoo’s own content, and user data to deliver “clear, concise responses.” The company claims that its new engine is informed by 500 million user profiles and a knowledge graph spanning over one billion entities.

Scout can leverage the capabilities of Yahoo-owned and operated properties to help users with tasks like understanding upcoming weather patterns before a vacation, getting details about an important game, tracking stock price movements after earnings, comparing products before buying, or fact-checking a news story.

Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo, while talking about the new feature in a release, said, “Search is fundamentally changing, and our team has been inspired to use our decades of experience and extremely rare assets to create something uniquely useful for Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of monthly users.”

“This beta launch is just the starting point. From search to our industry-leading verticals, Yahoo Scout will help our users accomplish their goals online faster and better than ever before,” he added.

Key features of Yahoo Scout:

Model: Yahoo says it has partnered with Anthropic to use Claude as the primary foundational AI model for Scout. Additionally, the company is also leveraging its long-standing relationship with Microsoft by using Bing’s grounding API to ensure answers are backed by authoritative sources from the open web.

Shopping: Yahoo has added a new shopping feature to distil insights from expert articles and reviews to compare brands and products instantly. The feature is aimed at providing shoppable links without the need to open endless tabs.

Yahoo Finance: The feature provides one-click access to real-time insights across company news, analyst ratings, financials, and earnings calls. The feature is designed to synthesise clear analysis with headlines that refresh every 10 minutes.

Who can use Yahoo Scout?

Yahoo Scout is currently available for users in the US. Interested users can navigate to Scout.Yahoo.com or the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android to use the new AI search experience. Yahoo says that Scout is available to nearly 250 million users in the US, with plans to expand its capabilities and personalisation features in the coming months.