Pinterest wants artificial intelligence to make a greater impact on its users’ experience with the platform.
The company announced Monday that it is upgrading its boards to further personalize users’ experience on the platform. Over the course of the next several months, the social media platform plans to add a feature it calls “Make it yours,” which it said will “recommend products and content to help users bring their inspirations to life.”
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Vicky Gkiza, vice president of product management, said the upgrades will help users bring their creative visions to life.
“Boards are central to what makes Pinterest an aspirational experience for our users, so we’re investing in making them even better,” Gkiza said in a statement. “Today’s updates make boards into a personal shopping assistant, powered by AI, to help users move from admiring their dream styles or spaces to actively achieving them.”
The updates to boards will be available globally. Pinterest did not disclose whether it plans to partner with specific brands or retailers to offer up shopping options.
In the U.S. and Canada, Pinterest plans to test out a feature it calls “Boards made for you,” which it says bridges human expertise and AI suggestions, delivering new boards to users on the app and via email. The company-generated boards, like users’ own boards, are expected to include shoppable content. Pinterest said users will begin to see this type of content in the coming months. It plans to include “weekly outfit inspirations” and “trending styles” on the boards, suited to each user’s interests, the company said.
U.S. and Canadian users will soon also have access to a tool Pinterest calls “Styled for you.” The platform will serve up “dynamic AI-powered collages created from fashion Pins users have saved to their boards.” As a user interacts with the collage, they can change up the apparel items included in an outfit to suit their needs and their sense of personal style.
The company has faced some criticism from consumers, who say that some of the value the platform once offered has devolved into “AI slop.”
Pinterest announced in late April that it has been testing out a program to label AI-generated content and said last week that it would allow users “dial down” the number of AI-created images users see on their feeds at their discretion. That seemed to go over well with many of its users.
These efforts are far from Pinterest’s first shot at experimenting with AI. In the past, the company has incorporated the technology to allow users to search visually. It has long leveraged algorithms to show users items that match their personal interests and the types of content they interact with on the platform.
Still, that Pinterest is actively working to push the platform toward becoming a “personal shopping assistant” bolstered by AI, as Gkiza said, is an interesting development. It coincides with an increasing number of consumers saying they would leverage AI for shopping and discovery, as well as the rise of agentic commerce, which major retailers like Walmart and Amazon are buying into in a big way, despite contrasts in their respective approaches.
