Perplexity debuts AI shopping assistant to rival tools from Google, OpenAI

Perplexity has launched its conversational shopping assistant with guided product discovery and PayPal-powered checkout, competing with tools from Google and OpenAI

Perplexity has added a conversational shopping experience to its service, rolling the feature out free to users in the US. The tool pairs the company’s AI assistant with product discovery and an integrated checkout flow powered by PayPal. The availability of this tool for India has not yet been announced by Perplexity. Notably, this news comes on the heel of OpenAI and Google recently announcing the rollout of similar shopping assistant tools in their respective AI services.

Perplexity shopping assistant: What features does it offer

The shopping experience lets users search and refine product queries in a back-and-forth conversation rather than using traditional search lists and long product grids. Perplexity says the assistant keeps the shopping context from one question to the next (for example, carrying preferences about climate or style across follow-up queries) and surfaces product cards that include specifications and reviews.

 

Perplexity has integrated PayPal to enable checkout inside the shopping flow. According to the company, retailers remain the merchant of record: the seller retains visibility into the customer, handles returns and loyalty and keeps the post-purchase relationship. Perplexity says the approach is intended to reduce cart abandonment by shortening the time between decision and payment.

How does Perplexity store and use context

Perplexity describes the system as remembering prior searches and user patterns to prioritise results that match a shopper’s preferences. The company frames the assistant as maintaining conversational context so follow-up requests (for example, “what about boots?” after asking about a jacket) use the same criteria.

How does Perplexity offering compare with OpenAI and Google

Like Perplexity’s conversational shopping, OpenAI’s Shopping Research turns product buying into a guided conversation: it asks follow-up questions to narrow preferences, pulls updated information from multiple sources and produces a comparative buyer’s guide. OpenAI says Shopping Research is powered by a version of GPT-5 mini, can take longer because it aggregates and checks details and has been rolled out on mobile and web for logged-in ChatGPT users across Free, Go, Plus and Pro tiers.

 

Google’s approach overlaps with Perplexity and OpenAI on conversational discovery and integrated purchase flows, but it also adds agentic automation tied to real-world commerce: AI Mode and Gemini can generate comparison-style results, call nearby stores using Duplex technology to check stock and prices and offer an “agentic checkout” that can complete a purchase (with user confirmation) when a tracked price hits a target. Google said that Agentic checkout is rolling out on Search and AI Mode for select US merchants, including Wayfair, Chewy, Quince and some Shopify sellers.

 

Perplexity’s shopping flow, by contrast, highlights an embedded checkout powered by PayPal while keeping the retailer as merchant of record. However, it does not have a feature of agentic checkout upon a tracked price hitting the target like that in Google.

Perplexity shopping assistant: Availability details

Perplexity’s shopping feature is available now on desktop and the web for US users. Perplexity says iOS and Android versions of the shopping experience in the US will arrive in the coming weeks.