Imagine a black mirror episode where you take a picture of an item and you can buy that exact item within a few clicks. Perplexity’s “Snap to Shop” feature will allow you to take a photo of an item, upload it to the AI search engine and find similar products to buy online.

Perplexity’s chatbot is now a shopper, transforming the online shopping experience into a single, streamlined process. Generative AI continues to increase competition and innovation over many industries, including e-commerce and online shopping experiences. Perplexity will now offer a way to research and shop directly from its chatbot. Imagine not needing to dig for reviews rather it’s all done in a few clicks. Perplexity AI will allow users to ask the chatbot their questions directly before purchasing . For people like me who are lazy when it comes to shopping, it will be like having a personal AI assistant/sales associate do your shopping with you.

The California-based AI startup provides a solution where users no longer have to jump from one search engine/app to another. Perplexity will use large language models as a way for users to ask about a product or describe it to the chatbot for it to navigate the web. Perplexity AI gained traction within the artificial intelligence industry by offering a chatbot that allows interactions with machine learning technology in a conversational manner. It is famous and highly praised for offering internet-based answers to users in a fraction of the brain effort while delivering a research/thesis level to their search outputs with footnotes and links.

Hurdles I Suspect:

• ADS: often search engines promote products through paid & sponsored ads. I’m curious to know if certain products will be ranked due to an influence. Currently, it is unclear even by Perplexity why the AI ranks certain products higher than others. Transparency will remain a challenge.

• Tik Tok Shop & Live Shopping: How will Perplexity compete against this & influencer paid ads.

• Discounts: Perplexity mightt have resistance because of app extensions like “Honey” to save on purchases.

Bottom Line:

I think once this level of trust is established with Perplexity and the bias is suppressed I think this can change the game of online shopping.