Pinterest CEO Bill Ready says the social app sees itself as an “AI-enabled shopping assistant” — but the full agentic web, where AI bots shop for you automatically, is still a long way off.
Ready made the comments on Pinterest’s Q2 2025 earnings call when asked about the agentic web’s potential impact on platforms like Pinterest. The idea: AI could one day fully handle shopping for users, cutting out early-stage inspiration services.
Investors are wary. What if AI just bought stuff for users based on its own judgment? Would that kill Pinterest’s relevance as a discovery tool? 
Ready pushed back hard.
Bill Ready stated on the call:
“I think this notion of an agent just going and buying all the things for you without you doing anything—,” Ready said on the Q2 earnings call. “I think 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,” he noted.
He argued Pinterest is already AI-powered behind the scenes. The app makes proactive, personalized shopping suggestions, acting like a “really great personal shopping assistant.”
Bill Ready explained:
“But when users say things like ‘Pinterest just gets me,’ it’s because they can open the app and the app is going to make recommendations to them proactively on things that they’re really interested in, that align with their taste and their style, the way that a really great personal shopping assistant would,” he said.
Pinterest says it’s in a “Cambrian moment” for AI deployment. The company uses AI for recommendations, multimodal AI mixing text and images, visual and conversational search, and boosting ad efficiency.
The company did not address growing user frustration over low-quality AI-generated content flooding the platform. Earlier this year, Pinterest added AI labels and filtering tools to fight AI spam. Users also suspect mass account bans come from faulty AI moderation — something Pinterest calls “internal errors.” Similar issues are rising on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr.
On AI talent, Ready said Pinterest attracts people who want to build “responsible” AI for positive impact. He claimed:
“On the mission side, I think we really, really punch above our weight,” the exec explained. “Both in terms of what we’re doing with tuning AI for positivity, creating a more positive alternative to what’s happening in the rest of social media,” he said.
Pinterest’s stock dipped after earnings. The company posted $998 million in revenue, beating expectations, but adjusted EPS was 33 cents, below the 35 cents analysts projected. Over half of monthly users are Gen Z, and male users jumped 95% year-over-year.
