Pinterest launches an experimental AI shopping app called ‘Ask Pinterest’

Pinterest Tests Conversational AI Shopping

Pinterest has announced a new experimental application, “Ask Pinterest,” signaling a deliberate move into conversational commerce. The standalone app aims to provide a chatbot-like interface for shopping and product discovery, tapping into the company’s extensive user interest data. The announcement comes just before the Cannes Lions adtech conference, where the application of AI for advertisers is a central theme, positioning Pinterest’s new initiatives directly within the industry's most current conversation.

The new app functions as a testing ground, allowing Pinterest to explore complex user queries without altering the core experience of its main platform. It leverages the company's proprietary “Taste Graph”—an internal map of user interests and aesthetics—along with an individual’s saved Pins and Boards to deliver personalized recommendations for multi-step tasks like planning a party or decorating a room. Alongside the consumer-facing app, Pinterest also rolled out a suite of tools for marketers:

• AI Assistant: A beta tool integrated into Ads Manager in the U.S. to help with campaign creation.
• Performance+ Creative: A new global AI model that automatically selects the best-performing ad creative for a given impression.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP): An infrastructure layer that allows advertisers to use third-party agentic tools to manage their campaigns in a standardized way.

This strategy places Pinterest in direct competition with tech giants like Google and Meta, which are also integrating generative AI into their search and shopping platforms. Instead of licensing its valuable “Taste Graph” data, Pinterest is using it to train its own models, intending to build a defensible ecosystem centered on contextual discovery. Chief Business Officer Lee Brown noted the company’s “unique advantage” in a future where search will be shaped by “context, taste, and trusted recommendations,” not just keywords. By developing its own tools, Pinterest is making a clear statement about owning the user experience for AI-driven visual discovery and commerce.

By developing a standalone conversational app, Pinterest is creating a controlled environment to refine its AI capabilities using its proprietary 'Taste Graph' data, strategically choosing to build a distinct shopping experience rather than becoming a data source for other platforms' AI agents.