Manish Chowdhary and Jer discuss Perplexity AI's new e-commerce features, including Buy with Pro one-click checkout and visual search. Manish breaks down how the technology works and where it's headed in online shopping.
Hello and welcome to Hot Takes with Manish and Jer, bringing you the latest buzzworthy e commerce news and insights. So Manish, I know you were traveling yesterday actually learning how to build AI agents, interestingly enough. So the timing, this is fun. Perplexity AI rolled out a new feature that will let Pro subscribers their paid plan purchase products without leaving the AI search engine, which is just that, it's AI search. It's not Google Search returning results that you have to read through and figure out the answer. It's actually summarizing the answer for you and giving the sources. Can you give us an overview of what this means? What are they trying to accomplish?
Perplexity has just launched what they called first of its kind AI commerce experience. So first things first, what is Buy with Pro? It essentially lets the user respond to conversational messages as opposed to, you know, keywords that you would type in on Google. Here you would interact with Perplexity and natural language. You'll ask questions and those will be prompts and then Perplexity will understand that query and spit out search results which will include product recommendations. And then with Buy with Pro, the user can check out using one click right on Perplexity website so they don't have to go elsewhere, they don't have to fill out a checkout form. In addition to that they have a nice feature called Snap to Shop, which is essentially visual search. You can take a picture of an item and then it can find related items that look like that. It's similar to Google Lens. Those are the primary features of Perplexity Commerce Search.
So how is it doing compared to the traditional search that we're used to?
Well, if you think about a traditional Google search, right, you will come up with a list of products and then you have to click on each product and read hundreds of reviews and figure out whether that's the right product for you. It's a very old school interface. Whereas Perplexity, what they're trying to do is make things smarter, you know, for the shopper. So it'll give you what they call cards which will summarize the information you can ask. Follow up question. Let's say if you ask the Perplexity engine, I'm looking for a cashmere sweater to wear to a party this coming weekend to go with brown pants, let's say it doesn't understand that query very well, you can further refine it so you can just keep going deeper and it can also summarize some of the reviews and give that information to the shopper. In, in a very easy format that the shopper can digest.
Have you tested it? Like what? How are they doing against their yardstick?
Well, my opinion, I just logged into my PRO account, the Perplexity Pro, which is 20 bucks a month, and I searched for a very simple query called looking for cashmere sweater for a party to go with brown pants. You know, and the first time the results that I got were all the women pants, women jogger pants. And even the first result that I got, I don't have the option to buy with Pro. So the first result is Bloomingdale's women's cashmere jogger pants. And I have to visit the website. The next one is Alo yoga cashmere high waist plush waffle pants. But remember, I asked for sweater, not for pants. So personally speaking, I think this is a long, long way away because the search results are poor and it really, it's really just behind the scenes. It probably doesn't have enough data or doesn't have enough intelligence, doesn't have enough context. It feels that way. Again, I'm optimistic about the future of this technology, but with my limited trial and quick test, I, I wasn't impressed.
Well, that's too bad because it seems like a natural fit for Gen AI, right? Understanding what it is that you're looking for, taking your profile that you're a male, that you're.
Although it does, it does give a couple of good suggestions, you know, to give it some credit, you know, so give you an answer as to what kind of shades and tones you could use. So give you, hey, if you, you know, neutral tones will give you a sophisticated monochromatic look. Rich colors like burgundy forest green will give you add depth and contrast. Soft pastel for subtle elegant touch. So there is, there is promise. But is the product really ready? I don't believe so. Again, but it's only my first couple of queries. But with the shoppers, you know, that's the first impression. And if your first result itself has no ability to buy with pro, then the shoppers are going to be disappointed and shoppers are very, very discerning.
What would be an obvious next move for Perplexity, whether expanding from the Shopify partnership to appeal to more users, return.
Better results, I think go back to the drawing board and work on your tech and get more data. Just don't fall prey to trying to Compete with the OpenAI's of the world by trying to launch products too prematurely. You know, we know what happened when Google launched Bard and then it had failed attempt of launching Gemini that bruised them severely. And I think a startup like Perplexity, I mean, Amazon has all the data in the world, so Amazon and Google have a lot more data. And Amazon in particular is not sleeping at the wheel. So this is not something that Amazon is going to let some other startup, you know, carve out, you know, a new niche. Although there's promise. You know, I like the idea. I've always believed. I've been involved in e commerce for a very long time. This whole concept of website and interface is obsolete in my opinion. In fact, you as the user will have an agent that will fetch the results in a format that you like. And you don't really care about what the website interface is and what their branding is. If your objective is to get through a certain purchasing decision rather quickly, then you may or may not care. Yes, some shoppers want that branded experience, but a lot of them just want to get in and get out.
All right, well, thanks, Manish. We'd love to hear your thoughts. The listeners, how will this impact you? What is your experience? Testing the buy with Pro. So leave a comment and until next time, keep learning and stay curious.
