Over the past two years, LinkedIn has sought to infuse AI into various parts of its platforms, including ad copy, content creation, personalized analytics, recruiting assistance, job search advice and learning. The company is now finally adding AI to one of the most used parts of the site: search.
Earlier this year, the company launched a job search tool for members in the US, allowing them to search for jobs using natural language queries. Now, the company is expanding the feature to search for people.
Users can use queries like “Find me healthcare investors with FDA experience,” people who “co-founded a productivity company and are based in New York,” or “Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks.”
Until now, LinkedIn search was more complicated. You can type in a few words to find the right people or rely on several different LinkedIn filters in the hope of getting the right results. In addition, you also need to think about what kind of words you might want to use to get the most out of the search engine.
“With lexical search, you have to know the exact title of the person, or you have to struggle with filters to find the right person, maybe. And if you didn’t know the right combination, the right person remained unknown. The new AI people search is designed to be the fastest way to the person who can help you the most,” LinkorCinrunch director Rohan told TechInrunch. a call.
The company said in its early trials, it has seen people use it to find others who can help them with their next job opportunity, expand their business or boost their career prospects.
Search has been one area where all web platforms are rushing to add AI. Seeing people gravitate towards chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, established search engines like Google, Bing, Brave and DuckDuckGo have added AI answers. There are many startups Powered by AI people research also. Reddit has also leaned heavily into AI-powered search and locked down its platform’s data, requiring other companies to sign a licensing agreement to train and use AI.
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LinkedIn is one of the most used sites in AI demos for agents, browsers and AI assistants. However, the Microsoft-owned company has yet to place restrictions on its data.
“I think we’re still early in this era of browsers and how they work on behalf of people. I think over time, we’ll have a more robust policy [around browsers]Rajiv said.
“On a broader note, I’ve seen a lot of demos that try to reason through a person’s LinkedIn network. This is one area where I think it’s going to be hard to find a substitute for the real thing because that’s the worst search ever.”
LinkedIn is launching AI-powered people search to premium users in the US with plans to expand it to other geographies in the coming months. People who have access to this feature will see “Looking for…” in the search bar instead of “Search”.
Search is not perfect. You will get different results when you use a query like “people who co-founded a YC startup” compared to using “Y Combinator” in the query. Also, when you search for “people who co-founded a voice AI startup,” some people who have LinkedIn top voice signal appear.
The company said it is working to improve how the search tool understands the query.
