Over the past week, overseas media have been speculating that OpenAI is planning to acquire Pinterest. Many are curious why this relatively lesser-known image-sharing platform was chosen, but in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense.

From OpenAI's perspective, both users and capital are pushing them to explore commercialization in shopping features.

Recently, after renovating and moving, I coincidentally caught the surge in product user numbers. I didn't have time to research and purchase individually, so I decided to let all household appliances and office supplies be selected by ChatGPT from Costco's products—after all, AI research capabilities are definitely better than my lazy self, and if any issues arise, I can return or exchange items from Costco. I used Shopping Research and on-site image recognition features to do a lot of analysis. The experience was excellent, and I haven't had any bad surprises so far.

According to the latest Deloitte report, 56% of users in the US are already relying on AI robots for purchasing advice. In advertising, everyone knows that the most expensive ad slots are those related to purchase intent (referencing Google keywords). So, with many users making buying decisions through ChatGPT, from the perspective of gaining more recognition from the capital market, ChatGPT also hopes to seize the shopping opportunity.

From Pinterest's perspective, Pinterest can just complement ChatGPT's insufficient capabilities in shopping recommendation research and shopping advertising scenarios.

Pinterest is a visual discovery and search platform centered around images, positioned between "search engine + social platform + e-commerce guide."

During the pandemic, many outdoor furniture e-commerce brands experienced rapid growth. One of the most successful projects was Outer, founded by Chinese-American Jiake in the Bay Area. They attributed their initial major growth channel to Pinterest, where they invested heavily in advertising.

Pinterest has 600 million monthly active users, and the vast majority of users are researching furniture, appliances, and decor purchases on the platform. Users not only have higher purchase intent but also spend about 30% more per order compared to ordinary e-commerce platforms.

Pinterest also has a unique product positioning advantage—an enormous amount of product photos and user reviews. While not strictly user data, this information is also very important for ChatGPT. In addition to data accumulation, Pinterest offers merchant sales display features and generates $3 billion annually in advertising revenue. Introducing merchants to ChatGPT could also open up opportunities for ChatGPT to sell ads officially.