Pinterest Launches AI Shopping Assistant to Transform Visual Discovery into Actionable Commerce

Pinterest's new shopping assistant finds products to fit your tastes - see how it works

The feature is available to US users aged 18 and above, with wider availability to follow. Instead of spending hours scrolling through your Pinterest feed looking for the perfect decor inspiration, outfit idea, nail set, or tattoo idea, you can ask Pinterest's new AI-powered assistant to find exactly what you're looking for. Also: Not sure what to buy? Amazon's latest shopping tool can help you decide - here's how it works Pinterest Assistant uses your saves, boards, collages -- and those of other users with similar tastes -- to find posts that match your interests and style. According to Pinterest, Pinterest Assistant differs from other chatbots because users don't need to know what they're looking for to find it. Instead, Pinterest Assistant offers "visual, personalized and proactive recommendations." Pinterest says it gathers information from users' interests to feed its visual discovery tool called Taste Graph, which provides AI-powered recommendations to users. Pinterest claims its AI shopping assistant is "visual-first," utilizing real-time, conversational descriptors to deliver personalized recommendations to shoppers. To more closely replicate real-life shopping experiences, users can verbally relay their requests to Pinterest Assistant. For example, Pinterest says, users can ask the Assistant questions like, "Show me holiday party dresses that fit my style." Pinterest Assistant is available in beta to users aged 18 and above in the US. Wider availability is planned for the coming weeks and months, according to Pinterest. Pinterest isn't the only online shopping platform to explore AI-powered search results, making shopping easier for customers. Amazon Lens enables users to point their camera at a product and receive similar products listed on Amazon, as well as suggested questions and product summaries. Another Amazon shopping tool uses AI to curate recommended items based on your shopping history and personal preferences. Also: Your Uber driver has a new side hustle: Training AI for cash Walmart and Sam's Club recently announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into shoppers' shopping experiences, offering personalized item recommendations and grocery list planning. Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.

Pinterest's new AI shopping assistant helps you pick a fit

Move over Andy Sachs, Pinterest is launching an AI-enabled shopping assistant that aims to suggest your next look. Beginning on Thursday, and over the coming weeks and months, Pinterest users will be able to talk to the visual platform about what they're shopping or searching for. The Pinterest Assistant will come back with personalized recommendations based on the user's saved collections and whatever pins are currently up on their screen, and briefly narrate the results. The AI assistant is meant to encourage a more conversational experience, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told The Verge. This is why the assistant only accepts voice inputs from users -- and why the assistant will talk back to users when it provides the suggested pins and products. (For now, you cannot turn off the audio narration.) The AI assistant is an optional feature that is not a replacement for traditional text-based search, which remains unchanged on the platform. Pinterest already uses AI to curate its recommendations to users, Ready said. The voice layer is the new addition to the text and image AI model. "What we're doing now is making it so that you can actually have a conversation with that," he said. During Ready's roughly three-year tenure, the platform has "effectively become an AI-powered shopping assistant for our nearly 600 million users," he said, more than half of whom are Gen Zers. The company attracted criticism earlier this year for allowing AI-generated slop to flood the platform. In response, Pinterest began labeling AI-generated images as such and launched a "tuner" feature for users to select categories, like fashion or beauty, that they want populated with less AI-generated content. Ready said that users are asking longer queries containing more information, which he sees as an indication that they want a more unstructured way of interacting with the platform. A Taylor Swift fan who likes knitting, for example, might not know what they're looking for or take the time to type out a vague vision, Ready said. "But when it's conversational, you see people speak very differently than they would type." Users can talk to the assistant by holding down the mic button, similar to sending a voice note to a friend. During a demo to The Verge, Pinterest's director of AI products Ryan Galgon asked the assistant to come up with fashion suggestions based on a Wimbledon poster image. Images of tennis-style outfits appeared on the screen, which the assistant verbally described before offering to search for more preppy or more casual ways to style the fit. Pinterest purposefully chose to keep the audible response concise with a brief description of the recommended pins, Galgon said. The goal is to maintain an experience that is "really grounded in visuals," he said. The Pinterest Assistant is powered by a "multimodal" AI model that is "visual-first." This means that the model can process audio, image, and text, and its output is images. Ready said that the core AI model is built in-house with proprietary "signal" data from users. It also includes some off-the-shelf AI models for basic language processing. Adult US users can now sign up to get access to a beta version of the new AI feature, which the company says will be made widely available over the next few weeks and months.

Pinterest has its own AI assistant now

Pinterest is adding a new way to find clothes, furniture and other sources of aesthetic inspiration through its app. It's called Pinterest Assistant, and it's an AI-powered search and recommendation tool that uses knowledge of your Pinterest activity to tailor its responses. Whereas other search features work best when you have a specific thing you're looking for in mind, Pinterest says the Pinterest Assistant is meant to handle more open-ended requests. Asking for pillows that match your "living room decor" is supposed to be enough for the AI to surface interesting results. To do that, the Pinterest Assistant looks at the items you've saved and the boards you've created (for example, a board full of living room decor inspiration), compares it with the things Pinterest users with similar taste have saved and displays visual results tailored to you. Pinterest appears to be specifically interested in the multimodal aspect of this new feature. The main way the company imagines you'll interact with Pinterest Assistant is via a mic icon in the Pinterest app that starts a voice search. The AI assistant then takes that audio prompt and uses it to filter and analyze visual content to find the best fit. Besides surfacing items you might not have found on your own, Pinterest says the whole process should be "closer to how people shop in real life." Rolling out its own AI features puts Pinterest in an interesting place when it comes to AI content on its platform. Users have complained that the growing amount of AI-generated material on Pinterest has made it hard to find real things to buy or add to a board. In May, the company started labeling AI content in the app to make finding real items easier, and earlier in October it added a way to "dial down" the amount of AI generated content users see in the app. Pinterest Assistant isn't necessarily a solution for an AI slop problem the company is struggling to solve, but it might help users who are sick of sifting through AI content anyway. Pinterest Assistant begins rolling out in beta today to users in the US who are 18 and over, with wider availability coming in the next weeks and months.

Pinterest Launches AI Shopping Assistant and Gen AI Controls | PYMNTS.com

The new Pinterest Assistant uses AI to help users find products and ideas that match their tastes, expanding the platform's long-standing focus on inspiration into one centered on action. The company said the update is designed to make Pinterest "a more actionable destination," unifying search, personalization and shopping within a single experience. Complementing the Assistant, Pinterest also announced AI-powered upgrades to its boards that generate tailored recommendations based on each user's activity and saved Pins. New features such as "Make It Yours," "More Ideas," and "All Saves" are being introduced across the United States and Canada, with "Boards Made for You" and "Styled for You" in testing. The company said the new experience will use AI to curate fashion, décor and lifestyle products that match each user's interests, making it easier to act on ideas by bringing inspiration and shopping into one place. Product Pins continue to connect directly to retailer sites, allowing users to move from discovery to purchase without leaving the platform's shopping environment. CEO Bill Ready said Pinterest's evolution reflects a deeper alignment between discovery and decision-making. "People come to Pinterest with intent," Ready said. "They arrive looking for ideas, and our job is to help them take action on that inspiration." The company reported more than 600 million monthly active users as of mid-2025. During Pinterest's second-quarter 2025 earnings call, Ready said the platform "has effectively become an AI-enabled shopping assistant," underscoring how artificial intelligence is now central to its growth strategy. Ready added that AI is powering every stage of the Pinterest experience, from personalized recommendations to shoppable search results, positioning the company to better connect intent-driven users with products they are ready to buy. Pinterest's move to AI-assisted shopping reflects a larger push among consumers to embrace the technology. A recent PYMNTS Intelligence survey showed that almost half of consumers want AI help with shopping. Those numbers jump dramatically for the younger generations. Other brands are also adopting AI tools to assist consumers in the shopping experience. Pinterest is also taking aim at the flood of synthetic media shaping online experiences. The company said roughly 57% of all content circulating on the internet now contains some degree of AI modification. To maintain clarity and control, Pinterest rolled out an AI tuner that lets users adjust how much generative content appears in their feeds. Through the tuner, users can customize their exposure to AI content across categories such as fashion, home decor and beauty. Pins that are created or altered by AI now carry an "AI-modified" label, while an updated "See fewer like this" feature allows users to refine what appears in their home feed. Pinterest said these controls were designed to "give people more context and choice" without limiting discovery. "Our community is at the heart of everything we do," said Matt Madrigal, chief technology officer. "With our new gen AI controls, we're empowering people to personalize their Pinterest experience more than ever, striking the right balance between human creativity and AI innovation, and ensuring every feed truly reflects what inspires them most."