Pinterest on Wednesday announced a new experimental app called “Ask PinterestThis will allow the company to explore a more conversational approach to shopping and product discovery that could eventually find its way into the main Pinterest app. It also introduced other AI initiatives, including the Pinterest Model Context Protocol (MCP), designed for advertisers running campaigns on the Pinterest platform, and other AI advertising tools.
The news comes just ahead of the annual adtech industry gathering at Cannes Lions, which this year is largely focused on how artificial intelligence can serve the needs of advertisers and marketers.
The Ask Pinterest web app gives the company another way to use its Taste Graph — its internal data to map people to their interests and tastes. It will initially be available in limited access, the company said.
The AI experience is designed to extend the visual discovery experience that Pinterest is known for beyond the main app into a conversational, chatbot-like interface where consumers can ask questions using natural language to get more personalized suggestions and inspiration.
It also comes as AI chatbots increasingly compete with traditional search engines for consumer attention. Google has already put AI to work to help online shoppers find what they need, track prices and check it out. ChatGPT has also experimented with agency marketplaces such as Meta, Shopify and others.
Instead of becoming a source of product recommendations that other AI services could tap into through licensing deals, Pinterest has largely focused on using its own data for training AI models and powers its AI products.
Additionally, by making Ask Pinterest a standalone app, the company has a way to experiment with the technology without disrupting the main Pinterest experience.
The company explains that Ask Pinterest could work for more complex or multi-step queries that wouldn’t fit a traditional Pinterest search. For example, you could use the app to ask for help planning a dinner or furnishing a room over time. The idea, Pinterest says, is to test and explore how AI could better support people’s shopping experiences while maintaining the user’s experience across sessions.
Ask Pinterest it can also leverage users’ stored Pins and boards to personalize its responses when users connect.
Over time, these results will help Pinterest create more AI-powered experiences for the company’s flagship app, the company believes.
Pinterest’s new app was announced alongside updates aimed at marketers, including the introduction of an AI assistant, still in beta, to Ads Manager in the US
A new AI model, creative Performance+, has also been introduced globally to help advertisers choose between different ad texts to find the one that is likely to perform best each time the ad appears. And the MCP infrastructure layer announced by Pinterest will allow advertisers to manage and track their campaigns using other third-party agent tools in a standardized way.
In one communication sharing the news, Pinterest Chief Business Officer Lee Brown gestured to the changing nature of web search, noting that, “the future of discovery won’t be defined by keywords alone. It will be shaped by context, taste and trusted recommendations” — an area where Pinterest believes it has a “unique advantage,” Brown said.
Ask Pinterest is currently available to a limited number of people on the web, for both mobile and desktop, the company says.
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