Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors on the company’s second-quarter earnings call that the social app and inspirational bookmarking site could be considered an “AI-enabled shopping assistant.” However, he thinks that the agentic web, where AI agents shop on users’ behalf, is still far in the future.
The remarks were made in response to a question about the agentic web, which could impact the search funnel and businesses like Pinterest, which positions itself at the early stages of the shopping journey — around the time when users are seeking ideas that could later turn into purchases.
Investors are likely concerned that if AI began to understand users’ interests, they could preemptively direct users to shop from their own personalized recommendations instead of using platforms like Pinterest.
“I think this notion of an agent just going and buying all the things for you without you doing anything—,” Ready said on the Q2 earnings call. “I think that’s going to be a very, very long cycle for that to play out, both in terms of how the users think about it, where the users are going to be ready to just let something go run off and do everything for them, save for maybe some very utilitarian journeys,” he noted.
Still, he pushed for Pinterest to be thought of as an AI-enabled shopping assistant, saying that the company doesn’t talk about it that way, usually, because it’s not how users think of it.
“But when users say things like ‘Pinterest just gets me,’ it’s because they can open the app and the app is going to make recommendations to them proactively on things that they’re really interested in, that align with their taste and their style, the way that a really great personal shopping assistant would,” he said.
The company referred to this moment in time, when businesses are exploring all the ways to create new, AI-driven experiences, as a “Cambrian moment …