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Pinterest CEO: AI Shopping Agents Still Years Away, Focus Remains on Personalization

Cansin Cengiz

08 Aug 2025 — 2 min read

Pinterest CEO: AI Shopping Agents Still Years Away, Focus Remains on Personalization

In a recent Q2 2025 earnings call, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready clarified the company's stance on the future of AI in online shopping, emphasizing that fully autonomous AI agents making purchases for users—known as agentic shopping—are not coming any time soon.

What Is Agentic Shopping?

Agentic shopping refers to AI-powered agents that would understand your preferences and shop on your behalf, streamlining the entire purchasing process without your direct involvement. While this concept is gaining attention in tech circles, Ready believes the reality is still distant.

Pinterest’s Approach: AI-Enabled, Not AI-Driven

Ready positioned Pinterest as an "AI-enabled shopping assistant," highlighting that the platform already uses AI to proactively recommend products and inspiration tailored to users' tastes and styles. However, he was quick to note that Pinterest's AI acts more as a guide than an autonomous agent making decisions for users.

"I think this notion of an agent just going and buying all the things for you without you doing anything... 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," Ready explained.

AI Innovations at Pinterest

Pinterest continues to invest heavily in AI to enhance user experiences. The company has rolled out:

AI-powered recommendation systems for personalization
Proprietary multimodal AI models that merge text and image understanding
Visual search features that let users find products from photos
Conversational search tools
AI-driven advertising optimization

Ready described this rapid evolution as a "Cambrian moment" for AI-driven experiences on Pinterest.

Quality and User Trust Remain Top Priorities

While Pinterest is leaning into AI, it also faces challenges. In 2025, the platform responded to user complaints about low-quality, AI-generated content by introducing labels for AI-generated images and new filters to help users control what they see. There have also been concerns about mass user bans, which some attribute to overreliance on AI moderation systems, though Pinterest attributes these bans to internal errors.

Building AI Responsibly

Ready emphasized Pinterest’s commitment to "tuning AI for positivity" and creating a more uplifting social media environment. He noted that attracting AI talent is easier for Pinterest because "people who want to work here care about AI that’s used for good and used responsibly."

Business Performance Update

Financially, Pinterest reported $998 million in revenue for Q2 2025, a 17% year-over-year increase and record user numbers. However, earnings per share came in slightly below analyst expectations at $0.33 (adjusted). Notably, more than half of Pinterest’s monthly users are now Gen Z, and the platform saw a 95% increase in male users year-over-year.

Takeaways for Business Owners

AI is already transforming online shopping experiences, but full automation (agentic shopping) remains a long-term vision.
Pinterest is investing in AI to improve personalization and user engagement while actively addressing challenges around content quality and moderation.
For businesses, Pinterest’s focus on responsible, user-centric AI offers new opportunities to reach customers in authentic, meaningful ways.