For the past two years, LinkedIn has been working to integrate AI into many aspects of its platforms, such as learning, hiring support, content generation, ad copy, and personalized digests. Finally, the company is incorporating AI into search, one of the most popular sections of the website.
The company launched a job search engine earlier this year that lets U.S. users look for employment using natural language queries. The company is now expanding the service to include persons search.
People who “co-founded a productivity company and are based in NYC,” “Find me investors in the healthcare sector with FDA experience,” or “Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks” are examples of inquiries that users might use.
LinkedIn’s search has been more difficult up until now. You can use a variety of LinkedIn filters in the hopes of obtaining the desired results, or you can write in a few terms to discover the proper people. In order to get the most out of the search system, you also need to consider what kinds of words you would wish to employ.
“With lexical search, you have to know the exact title of the person, or you need to wrestle with filters to find the right person, maybe. And if you didn’t know the right combination, the right person remained undiscovered. The new AI-powered people search is designed to be the fastest path to the person who can help you the most,” Rohan Rajiv, senior director of product management at LinkedIn, told.
According to the company’s first testing, users have used this to find people who can assist them with their next job opportunity, grow their business, or improve their career prospects.
One area where all online platforms have been racing to include AI is search. AI-powered responses have been added by established search engines including Google, Bing, Brave, and DuckDuckGo in response to users’ preference for chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Numerous startups are also developing AI-powered people search. Additionally, Reddit has significantly relied on AI-powered search, secured the data on its platform, and requested that other companies sign a licensing agreement for the use and training of AI.
One of the most popular websites for AI agents, browsers, and assistants is LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned business hasn’t yet placed limitations on its data, though.
“I think we are still early in this age of browsers and how they are working on behalf of people. I think over time, we will have a more sturdy policy [around browsers],” Rajiv said.
“On a broader note, I have seen a lot of demos that try to reason over a person’s LinkedIn network. This is sort of an area where I think it is going to be hard to find a substitute for the real thing because this is the worst the search has ever been.”
In the upcoming months, LinkedIn intends to extend its AI-powered people search to other regions. Currently, it is only available to premium users in the United States. Those that have access to this feature will see “I’m looking for…” rather than “Search” in the search field.
The search is not flawless. A query like “people who co-founded a YC startup” would get different results than one that uses “Y Combinator.” Additionally, some persons with a LinkedIn top voice badge appear when you search for “people who co-founded a voice AI startup.”
The company stated that it is attempting to enhance the search tool’s comprehension of the inquiry.
