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Pinterest is adding a new way to find clothing, furniture and other sources of aesthetic inspiration through its application. 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.
While other search features work best when you have something specific in mind, Pinterest says Pinterest Assistant is designed to handle more open-ended requests. Ordering pillows that match your “living room decor” is supposed to be enough for the AI to get interesting results. To do that, 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 to things that Pinterest users with similar tastes have saved, and displays visual results personalized for you.
You start a search with Pinterest Assistant by tapping the microphone icon. (Pinterest)
Pinterest seems 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 through a microphone icon in the Pinterest app that initiates a voice search. The AI assistant then takes that audio message and uses it to filter and analyze visual content to find the best fit. In addition to featuring items you may not have found on your own, Pinterest says the entire process should be “closer to how people shop in real life.”
Implementing its own AI features puts Pinterest in an interesting place when it comes to AI content on its platform. Users they have complained that the growing amount of AI-generated material on Pinterest has made it difficult to find real things to buy or add to a board. In May, the company began tagging AI content in the app to make it easier to find real items, and in early October it added a way to “reduce” the amount of AI-generated content users see in the app. Pinterest Assistant isn’t necessarily a solution to an AI problem the company is struggling to solve, but it could help users who are tired of sifting through AI content anyway.
Pinterest Assistant begins rolling out in beta today to US users 18 and older, with wider availability coming in the coming weeks and months.
