Yelp is adding more AI features to its platform, including an AI assistant and “AI stitched videos.”
On Tuesday, crowdsourced review site OG announced Yelp Assistant and TikTok-style videos that provide a breakdown of what people are saying about specific businesses, like restaurants.
These tools complement Yelp’s growing collection of generative AI features, such as AI-powered summaries for restaurants and attractions, which launched in January. Large Language Models (LLMs) are known for their ability to analyze and summarize large amounts of data, making them ideal for parsing the wealth of reviews on Yelp business pages.
“AI allows us to transform the way people discover and connect with local businesses,” said Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s chief product officer.
Yelp’s AI assistant takes discovering and connecting with local businesses a step further by providing a conversational chat experience that helps users find the right professionals in categories like “Home, Local, Car, Beauty, Pet “, real estate, career, event planning, financial services, and more,” the announcement said.
Destructible speed of light
Yelp Assistant will inform you about your problem and even connect you with relevant professionals.
Photo credit: Yelp
How does Yelp Assistant work?
When you start a chat with Yelp Assistant, it will ask additional questions to understand your project or issue, provide relevant businesses, and even compose and submit a detailed query to those businesses on your behalf, including inquiries about pricing and availability.
Based on the demo, Yelp Assistant says it’s looking for “sponsored local professionals.” So if it only shows companies that pay for placement, it might not be as useful because it won’t show organic search results. Mashable has reached out to Yelp for clarification and will update this story accordingly.
Yelp Assistant can only discover sponsored businesses.
Photo credit: Yelp
You can find the Yelp Assistant in the “Projects” tab. It’s available now on iOS and will also be available on Android later this summer.
Yelp also announced a tool that provides video summaries of businesses in the style familiar to TikTok and Reels users. Yelp will soon begin testing videos that use AI to stitch together videos, photos, and AI voiceovers, sharing information and insights from user reviews.
Based on the demo, the result makes for local promotion on a limited budget with its friendly music and fade transitions. But for such a text-heavy website, it could be a welcome change for those interested in visuals.
subjects
Apps and software artificial intelligence