Are you ready to let AI do your shopping? Well, that's what Perplexity thinks is the next step in e-commerce.
It has announced an AI-powered shopping assistant. What purpose does it serve? The company says that unlike search engines that may find exact matches for a user's query, AI assistants are tailored for personal use, and aid in discovery of products that better suit their requirements. It says shopping assistants have to understand the user's intent, remember their preferences, act as extensions of the user, and help save time that could have otherwise been spent on manual research.
To do all this, Perplexity's announcement says that the AI takes into account your usage history such as past searches, daily habits, creative habits, to learn your patterns. It knows and remembers what you have told it. When a user asks it a specific query, even a complex one like “What’s the best winter jacket if I live in San Francisco and take a ferry to work?” or "What's the best camera for a motion designer focused on photo and video?", it generates a response that fits the user's requirements based on its knowledge of your searches, preferences.
The Shop with Perplexity experience creates product cards with images, pricing, delivery details, and other information. It even displays curated reviews and recommendations, based on buyer reviews for the product, explaining why the item fits the user's particular needs. Here is a video demo of the feature.
You can ask follow-up questions about a product, to learn more about it, or fine tune your query. Perplexity's shopping assistant seems to be more of a personalized AI-powered search model, than a full-fledged agentic AI that acts on your behalf. Don't forget to read my previous coverage of Perplexity's Comet browser.
And it can also assist users place an order for the product, even handling the payment, if they permit the AI to. Speaking of which, PayPal has announced that it has partnered with Perplexity to launch Instant Buy, a feature that lets Perplexity users checkout with PayPal instantly while shopping. This video shows how the process works.
PayPal is offering a one-time cashback of 50% (up to $50) for shoppers who complete their first purchase using PayPal within Perplexity between 9:00 am ET on November 25, 2025, through 11:59 pm ET on December 1, 2025. You can find more details about it on PayPal's website.
Perplexity's AI shopping assistant is available for free for users in the U.S. It is currently supported on desktop and web, and is coming to iOS and Android in a few weeks.
Perplexity believes this is what e-commerce should have been, better for consumers and merchants. That's fancy stuff, but remember, convenience comes at a cost: your privacy.
What do you think?
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