Perplexity just fired another shot in the AI arms race, launching a free AI-powered shopping assistant that puts it head-to-head with ChatGPT and Google's shopping features right as Black Friday kicks off. The startup's new personal shopper remembers your preferences and lets you buy directly through PayPal, marking its boldest push yet into consumer AI applications.
The AI shopping wars just got more crowded. Perplexity rolled out its free AI-powered shopping feature today, directly challenging OpenAI and Google as consumers gear up for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. The timing isn't coincidental - it's calculated.
Perplexity's approach mirrors what we've seen from ChatGPT's shopping research tool. Users type what they're looking for, refine with follow-up questions, and get product recommendations displayed as cards with specs and reviews. But Perplexity's betting on memory as its differentiator. Ask for a commuter jacket for your Bay Area ferry ride, and the AI will remember that context when you later search for boots.
The real innovation is in the checkout flow. Through what Perplexity calls its 'Instant Buy' partnership with PayPal, users can purchase directly without leaving the chat interface. This addresses what The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel has called 'the DoorDash problem' - AI agents that cut merchants out of the customer relationship.
'Instant Buy allows merchants to stay in the retail loop and build relationships with customers, just as they would on their own sites,' Perplexity explains in its announcement post. It's a strategic move to avoid the backlash that's hit other AI platforms for disrupting traditional commerce relationships.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas isn't pulling punches about the competition. The company's blog post takes direct aim at search bars that 'fail at exploration' and editorial outlets that 'prioritize affiliate revenue over matching readers to the exact products they'll love.' That's a not-so-subtle dig at Google's shopping results and traditional product review sites.
The feature launches just as holiday shopping hits peak intensity. OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT's shopping research tool earlier this month, while Google has been pushing its AI-powered shopping experience through Gemini. Now Perplexity's throwing its hat in the ring with a consumer-facing feature that could significantly expand its user base beyond search power users.
