Perplexity AI adds a ‘conversational’ shopping assistant to help you find what to buy: here's how it works

Soon after OpenAI launched its shopping research feature, Perplexity has also brought in a dedicated AI shopping assistant which uses natural language prompts to provide personalised product recommendations to users. Perplexity says its conversational search knows about the history of users, learns what matters to them and improves with continued use.

“Our approach to shopping represents how we think about AI assistants across every feature we build, whether browsing, managing email, or working on tasks in the background. AI assistants are at their best when they scale users, rather than replace them. They understand intent, remember preferences, and act as extensions of how users would approach a task on their own,” the company said in a blog post.

The new conversational search is already rolling out to users on desktop and web, and access on the Perplexity iOS and Android app will be rolled out in the coming weeks, the company says. The shopping experience is currently limited to the United States.

How does Perplexity conversational search shopping work?

Perplexity says its AI will be able to understand the unique needs of the shopper better than an algorithm while also offering the specifications and reviews that a user would need in order to make a buying choice.

Users do not need to use specific keywords while searching for a product and can search on Perplexity using natural language queries. For instance, when a user asks Perplexity, “What’s the best winter jacket if I live in San Francisco and take a ferry to work?”, the company says its AI will look into the user's history to understand their commute route and give a result based on that.

The AI startup also noted that when users ask follow up questions like “What about boots?”, its AI can maintain the same context and give suggestions based on that.

“Perplexity remembers your past searches and learns your patterns, so when you ask about a desk lamp today, it finds options that match your mid century modern aesthetic, not what advertisers want to sell first,” the company explained in its blog post.

Perplexity has partnered with PayPal to process payments for orders. The company says this partnership will let retailers stay at the centre of the transaction as the merchant of record and provide them with full visibility into who their customer is. It also noted that customers who go through the conversational, personalised shopping experience have significantly higher intention to purchase.