Perplexity Introduces 'Buy With Pro' And ‘Snap To Shop’ To Make Its AI A Better Shopping Assistant

In the AI field, it's business as usual. And things are becoming more and more competitive.

In a race for supremacy, where more businesses built around Large Language Models (LLMs) emerge, a trend kickstarted by OpenAI's introduction of ChatGPT, companies are turning into rivals, constantly improving their products with new features and innovations to stay ahead.

Perplexity is one of the dominant players.

Securing its foundation as a conversational search engine that uses LLMs to answer queries, Perplexity is introducing two new features to its AI.

The idea is to make the AI a better "shopping assistant."

In a blog post, Perplexity said that:

Here, Perplexity introduces what it calls the 'Perplexity Shopping.'

For Perplexity Pro users in the U.S., the company introduced 'Buy with Pro,' which lets users check out seamlessly right on Perplexity's website or app for select products from select merchants.

To make use of the feature, users just have to save their shipping and billing information through Perplexity's secure portal and select 'Buy with Pro' to place your order, and let the AI do the rest.

In cases where Buy with Pro isn’t available, Perplexity will automatically redirect users to the merchant’s website to complete their purchase.

"When you ask Perplexity a shopping question, you’ll still get the precise, objective answers you expect, plus easy-to-read product cards showing the most relevant items, along with key details presented in a simple, visual format. These cards aren’t sponsored—they’re unbiased recommendations, tailored to your search by our AI," said Perplexity.

The next update, is the 'Snap to Shop' feature.

What it does, is allowing users to use Perplexity as a visual search engine, in order to look for relevant or similar products.

To do this, all users have to do, is upload a photo from their gallery, or from their camera, and let Perplexity look for it on the web.

"Now, you can easily find what you’re looking for, even if you don’t have a product description or name," said Perplexity.

This feature is similar to Google Lens.

To entice users into using Perplexity Shopping, Perplexity said that shoppers using Buy with Pro will get a free shipping "as a thank-you for shopping with Perplexity."

And to embrace merchants and scale the Perplexity Shopping experience, Perplexity introduces what it calls the 'Perplexity Merchant Program.'

The program is meant to make it easy for large retailers to share their product specs with Perplexity, ensuring that Perplexity can access live details on all the best available products they have in store.

"This program is free for merchants, and we've designed it to give them a straightforward process for sharing data. This is distinct from and unrelated to Perplexity’s new sponsored questions ad products," explained Perplexity.

Benefits of joining the Perplexity Merchant Program include increased chances of being a "recommended product, payment integrations with Buy with Pro, a free API access, and a custom dashboard so merchants can get insight into the trends.

At this time, AI commerce has emerged as a new online shopping experience for buyers.

Perplexity takes a bold step into e-commerce with Perplexity Shopping, which aims to seamlessly blend advanced AI with user-friendly tools to enhance shopping experience.