Yelp Unveils Major AI Overhaul: Enhanced Assistant, Menu Vision, and AI Phone Agents

Yelp's AI assistant can now scan restaurant menus to show you what dishes look like | TechCrunch

Yelp is releasing multiple AI-powered updates Tuesday, including an updated AI assistant that can answer questions about restaurants, bars, local attractions, or retailers. The assistant can also scan a physical menu to provide information about dishes. Additionally, the company is improving search with support for natural language and voice queries, and highlighting popular offerings on business pages, including auto shops, hair salons, clothing stores, and parks. The company launched an AI-powered assistant last year to help you connect with the right services by describing your problem. Yelp is now using similar technology to answer questions about other kinds of businesses, including a restaurant, bar, local attraction, and retailer. The assistant uses information from a business's page, website, reviews, and photos to provide answers. For instance, you can ask about the kinds of animals you might see at a zoo. Yelp is displaying pre-written questions on business pages based on frequently asked questions, so you don't have to type them out yourself. The company said that the assistant for services will now remember your preferences and give you tailored recommendations for your next project. The company is also improving search by allowing users to type questions in everyday language directly into the search box. The app will support these conversational queries through voice search. Until now, Yelp has highlighted popular dishes and drinks on restaurant and bar pages. The company will now also show popular desserts on food outlets' pages. Additionally, the company is expanding this feature to more than 100 business categories. Users will be able to see the top services offered by an outlet in a "most mentioned" section on each page -- for instance, popular haircuts or color treatments at a salon. Yelp is adding another AI-powered feature that helps diners explore menu items. Using AI image recognition, users can scan a physical menu with their phone camera and overlay bubbles will appear on screen over different dishes. Tap a bubble to see photos of that dish and read what diners have said about it. With these new features, the company is making search more visual and conversational. In response to the rise of chat-style search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, established players like Google have also added similar features to their search and Maps to aid the discovery of new places. Earlier this year, the company previewed AI-powered voice agents for restaurants and services businesses. With its new update, these tools are now available to businesses. The company's AI host can take bookings, answer questions, handle special requests, and change reservations for restaurants. Its AI receptionist for services businesses can gather project details, help qualify leads, and send call summaries to the business's Yelp inbox. Other companies like Square and Kea are also providing AI-powered voice solutions for restaurants and order management. With this fall release, Yelp is also launching several additional features: AI-generated videos that compile user photos and narrate information about restaurants and bars; expanded video uploads (from 10 to 30 seconds); a new visual summary of restaurants and bars using photos and videos; grouped before-and-after photos for service businesses; and a new section for planning future projects.

Yelp Revamp Includes Expanded Chatbot Assistant, Menu Vision and More

The update adds natural-language search and an AI assistant and introduces call answering for restaurants and other businesses. Yelp released its biggest AI revamp to date as part of a fall 2025 product release, including 35 new features or updates. These include a big expansion of its Yelp Assistant chatbot, which was previously available for home repairs. Now, the bot can answer questions about restaurants and retailers asked with natural-language voice or text prompts. Other significant updates include Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist, meant to help restaurants and other small businesses handle incoming calls with AI tools. Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source. For those who use Yelp to skim menus for restaurants they might want to visit, Menu Vision is a new tool that combines AI and augmented reality to show photos, review snippets and links to popular dishes when you view a menu with your smartphone camera. Yelp is also rolling out the Car Genius hotline a year after acquiring RepairPal to book auto-repair appointments. Yelp has been aggressively adding AI features to its directory and review services. Earlier this year, it began offering AI video summaries of reviews. In a video about the updates, Yelp's Chief Product Officer Craig Saldanha said the company is rolling out more than 30 changes. "Today marks a major milestone for Yelp with our biggest AI release yet that will change how you use Yelp to discover and connect with great local businesses," Saldanha said.

Yelp is getting more AI, including an upgraded chatbot

AI is the star of Yelp's fall product update. The review site has updated Yelp Assistant, its chatbot to answer users' questions, rolling the tool out for all business categories. Its responses will draw on information from the business' website as well as posts by other Yelp users. The chatbot will also remember past queries and preferences when it's used for finding services. Saved information can be managed in the Yelp app under Yelp Assistant memory settings. Yelp has been pushing more artificial intelligence into its platform, adding in December and announcing in April. The AI-powered calling is rolling out in the company's fall update as Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist. Yelp Host is specifically for table-service restaurants, and promises the ability to take reservations, change bookings and capture special requests. It is available now starting at $149 a month, or $99 a month for customers with a Yelp Guest Manager plan. Yelp Receptionist can manage calls for any "eligible local businesses." Subscriptions to this AI-powered service start at $99 a month and will begin rolling out this week. There are several other updates from Yelp, but one of the more interesting ones is Menu Vision. With this resource, pointing your camera at a restaurant's menu will show photos of the dish in question along with reviews about that particular item. Menu Vision will arrive on the iOS and Android apps this week.

Yelp's AI assistant can now answer questions about local businesses

Yelp users looking to learn more about restaurants, businesses, and other locations on the platform can now get information from an AI-powered Yelp Assistant. When logged-in users on Yelp's iOS and Android apps visit particular business pages, they can now ask specific questions ranging from where to park to whether a restaurant offers vegan options. The answers are generated based on facts from reviews posted on Yelp, information provided to the platform by businesses, and businesses' own websites, with relevant sections and even photos from Yelp reviews highlighted in the AI response. The assistant also provides a list of suggested questions to ask about a particular business. In addition, a new AI-powered feature called Popular Offerings separately highlights goods and services frequently mentioned and photographed in a business's Yelp reviews. In a demonstration for Fast Company, Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, Yelp senior vice president of product, highlighted how the Yelp Assistant could answer questions about a restaurant's cuisine, parking, dog-friendly seating, and even the best times to avoid a long wait. The AI surfaced information from reviews and even user-submitted photos of canine-compatible outdoor tables. "This isn't an AI that's hallucinating," says Kuduvalli Ramesh. "This is an AI that is providing me answers, evidence first."

Yelp goes all in on AI with smart menus and virtual phone agents

Yelp's AI assistant now supports restaurants, bars, attractions, and retail shops, not just service pros. Users can ask Yelp's AI questions in natural language and get personalized recommendations. Yelp has launched a comprehensive suite of artificial intelligence features, including a tool named "Menu Vision," as reported on October 21, 2025. The update is designed to change how users discover and engage with local businesses. The new Menu Vision feature allows users to point their phone's camera at a physical restaurant menu. This action overlays interactive bubbles on the screen, corresponding to specific dishes. Tapping these bubbles reveals user-submitted photographs of the food item, alongside relevant snippets from customer reviews. This function provides diners with immediate visual context and peer feedback, helping to inform their ordering decisions directly from the menu. The tool aims to improve the restaurant discovery experience by clarifying menu options. This release is part of a larger update that expands Yelp's AI assistant beyond its original focus on service professionals. The assistant now covers a wider range of businesses, including restaurants, bars, attractions, and retailers. It is programmed to answer natural language questions, remember user preferences from past searches, and provide personalized recommendations based on that interaction history. Yelp also introduced conversational and voice-search capabilities, which allow users to ask questions in ordinary language, mirroring trends from chat-style AI tools. Additionally, the company launched two new AI phone agents, "Host" and "Receptionist," to address staffing challenges within the service industry. These automated agents can handle customer calls 24/7, managing and modifying restaurant reservations and answering detailed questions about a restaurant's policies. The agents are also capable of sending automated follow-up texts for confirmation and other communications. Yelp described this initiative as its biggest AI release yet, aimed at streamlining the process of local business discovery and interaction for both consumers and business owners.