By The Tech Buzz Team
Publication Date: 2025-11-25 20:13:00
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Perplexity launches free AI shopping assistant with PayPal integration for instant purchases
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Features contextual memory to remember past searches and refine future recommendations
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Direct challenge to OpenAI’s ChatGPT shopping research and Google’s Gemini shopping tools
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Available now on desktop/web, mobile versions coming ‘in the coming weeks’
Perplexity just launched its AI shopping assistant to US users, throwing another punch in the escalating battle between AI companies for retail dominance. The free feature launches with direct PayPal integration and contextual memory that remembers your past shopping conversations – capabilities that set it apart from similar recent launches by OpenAI and Google.
Perplexity just fired the latest shot in AI’s retail wars. The search startup launched its shopping assistant today, complete with contextual memory and one-click PayPal checkout that puts it in direct competition with recent shopping features from OpenAI and Google. The timing couldn’t be more strategic – right as Black Friday shopping hits peak frenzy. What makes Perplexity’s approach different isn’t just the shopping capability itself, but how it’s positioning against what The Verge’s Nilay Patel calls “the DoorDash problem” – when AI agents cut merchants out of customer relationships entirely. The company’s “Instant Buy” partnership with PayPal lets merchants “stay in the retail loop and build relationships with customers, just as they would on their own…
