Pinterest, Inc. is introducing a new set of tools to help advertisers spot and respond to visual trends on the app, as generative AI redirects product discovery away from the “search-and-click model.”
The company said it is launching three AI-powered tools for advertisers and one experimental AI platform for users—all of which are designed to better compete at a time when the search algorithm is not just defined by popular interests but by AI recommendations.
Pinterest has been making itself ready for AI, even if it means making more room by laying off less than 15 percent of its workers. It recently said it would spend $4 billion in a partnership with Amazon Web Services that would train large language and vision-language models for personalized visual search and AI-assisted discovery.
“The future of discovery won’t be driven by keywords alone. It will be shaped by context, taste, and trusted recommendations,” Lee Brown, chief business officer at Pinterest, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Pinterest has a unique advantage because people come to our platform to plan, curate and take action on what they want to do next. We’re building AI experiences and infrastructure that tap into those signals in more useful and relevant ways,” he added.
One of these tools is called Business Assistant, an AI that will have a deep understanding of both an advertiser’s business and the app’s insights. This will be part of Pinterest’s Ads Manager, where brands manage their campaigns on the app.
The Business Assistant does not respond with walls of text, but with visuals instead. It shows top pins and breakout trends, explaining to brands how a specific user interest grew and citing trending pins that could inspire their ads.
Pinterest said it is also embedding AI into partner tools with Pinterest MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, an AI-native infrastructure that connects Pinterest to the copilots and agentic tools advertisers can rely on. As AI transforms marketing, partners need a reliable, standardized integration.
This would provide brands secure access to campaign, analytics and keyword insights. It grounds AI workflows in Pinterest’s unique signals including taste, trends and intent, allowing partner copilots to provide platform-specific guidance directly within existing tools. Pinterest said it is developing the MCP with partners such as PMG, a leading independent advertising agency, and Dentsu, a Japanese advertising and marketing company.
Moreover, Pinterest said it is introducing a new AI model to work with Pinterest Performance+ creative, an advertising suite on Pinterest that is already AI-powered and is designed to optimize ad campaigns.
Through dynamic creative selection, this particular model can evaluate a broader set of creatives and identify the variant most likely to perform for each ad impression. In testing, Pinterest said the new model increased click volume by 7.5 percent compared to the previous singular variant model.
The company is also launching a new experimental app called Ask Pinterest. It is designed for more conversational, complex, multi-step decisions that don’t fit neatly into a single search, the company said, such as planning a dinner party on a budget, or furnishing a room over time.
“What we learn from Ask Pinterest will help inform future AI-powered experiences across the main app,” the company said.
