Perplexity is going after the e-commerce market with a new AI-powered shopping assistant
Perplexity AI has launched an AI-powered shopping assistant featuring one-click checkout, visual search capabilities, and unbiased product recommendations, alongside a new merchant program to expand its retail partnerships.
Perplexity has launched its first shopping experience for Pro users in the US. The startup describes its 'Buy with Pro' product as "a first-of-its-kind AI commerce experience" with good reason: Perplexity's 'Buy with Pro' leverages the startup's AI technologies to enable users to find what they look for and, in case of select products and sellers, buy these products right from Perplexity's app and website.
These purchases are facilitated by Perplexity's secure portal, where customers can upload their shipping and billing information and let Perplexity handle the logistics. The startup even offers free shipping as a thank-you for purchases completed using Buy with Pro. If an item is unavailable for purchase through Buy with Pro, Perplexity redirects customers to the merchant's direct website.
Two more AI-powered shopping assistance features launched alongside Buy with Pro are the capability of searching products from photos—much like Google's recent 'shopping with Lens' update, which lets users find products from Google's Shopping Graph using Lens' image recognition capabilities—and product cards clearly describing the search results, presenting unbiased (not sponsored) recommendations to user queries.
Integrations with shopping platforms, including Shopify, make the new features possible and aim to make the online shopping process faster and easier for Perplexity Pro users in the US and other upcoming locations.
In parallel to this launch, Perplexity also announced the Perplexity Merchant Program. This free program allows prospective vendors to share data with Perplexity easily. By giving the startup access to their catalogs, vendors increase the chances of their products becoming 'recommended products' since Perplexity will have more information on them. The program also includes payment integrations so sellers can offer their products through the Buy with Pro feature, free API access to develop experiences powered by Perplexity on their online storefronts, and access to an analytics dashboard.
