Artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity launched a shopping center on Monday to attract users, aiming to strengthen its platform as it attempts to tackle Alphabet-owned Google’s dominance in the search engine space.
The company, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and artificial intelligence chip maker Nvidia, will give users product sheets featuring relevant items in response to shopping-related questions.
Each sheet provides product details in a visual format, the company said.
The new functionality is powered by the integration of platforms such as Shopify, which provides access to recent and relevant product information from Canadian e-commerce platform companies that ship their products to the United States.
E-commerce platforms have been working to use more AI-powered tools in order to attract more merchants.
Perplexity’s rollout, focused on online shopping, includes “Snap to Shop,” a visual search tool that displays products based on user-taken photos of an item.
These features are launching first in the United States and will later be expanded to other markets, the timing of which has not been specified.
Perplexity is also introducing a “Merchant Program” to allow retailers to share product information with the company.
The startup is in the process of raising new investments that would value it at $9 billion, as Reuters reported in early November.
Perplexity is looking to expand its offering, with OpenAI now a direct competitor after the generative AI pioneer added a series of new search functions to ChatGPT.
