As the artificial intelligence (AI) market continues to grow, Perplexity,an AI-powered search engine, makes a mark in e-commerce. The company plans to extend the use of AI for shopping by adding a shopping feature on its platform.
As reported by Reuters, Perplexity now offers shopping recommendations within its platform. However, as of now the feature is only available for US-based customers.
Perplexity adds ‘shopping’ feature
On November 18, the AI-powered search engine debuted a new shopping feature for its paid users in the U.S. So, how does this exactly work? The firm, backed by AI chipmaker Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will give users product cards showing relevant items in response to questions related to shopping. Each of these cards will show you the details of the product. For example, you can get the pricing, seller info, a short description, and the pros and cons of the item. You just need to search for a product and everything will be there in a single search.
The new ‘shopping’ feature will be powered by Shopify. This will help users to get relevant and recent information about the searched products. You can get a visual of the products that you are searching for. Notably, Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce platform which ships products globally. The new online shopping-focused rollout also includes ‘Snap to Shop’ . This is a visual search tool that shows products based on users’ photos of an item.
Furthermore, you can also store their address and credit card details for an easy checkout. The company also claimed that the feature can calculate the taxes based on your address. This helps you to check out with just a click. Also, the pro subscription enables you to get free shipping for the products purchased using its ‘one-click checkout’ system.
The way ahead
In addition to this, the platform will also bring a Merchant Program’ to allow retailers to share product information with the company. With the new feature, the company aims to compete with Amazon and Google. Both Google and Amazon have been ruling the search platform and e-commerce sector respectively for a long time. So, with the new feature Perplexity aims to acquire a part of ‘shopping search results’.
However, some suggest that AI recommendations might be biased. This is because most of the AI search results are based on popular search results. In response to this concern, “For now, the search engine’s recommendations are unbiased as there are no sponsored slots,” Perplexity explained.
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