Over the past two years, LinkedIn has been experimenting with bringing AI to different parts of its platform, including ad copy, content creation, personalized digests, recruiting assistance, career advice, and learning. The company is now finally adding AI to search, one of the most used parts of the site.
Earlier this year, the company released a job search tool for its U.S. members that lets them search for jobs using natural language queries. Now, the company is extending this feature to people searches as well.
Users can use queries such as “Find a healthcare investor with FDA experience,” “Someone who co-founded a productivity company and is based in New York,” or “Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks?”
In the past, searching on LinkedIn was more complex. You can type in a few words and find the right person, or you can rely on the various LinkedIn filters and hope for the right results. You also need to think about what types of words to use to get the most out of your search system.
“With Vocabulary Search, you might need to know the person’s exact title, or you might have to wrestle with filters to find the right person. And if you don’t know the right combination, the right people will remain undiscovered. Our new AI-powered people search is designed to get you to the people who can help you the most, the fastest way,” Rohan Rajiv, LinkedIn’s senior director of product management, told TechCrunch over the phone.
The company said that in early testing, some people were using it to find people who could help them with their next job opportunity, expand their business, or improve their career prospects.
Search is one area where all internet platforms are rushing to add AI. As people look to chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, existing search engines like Google, Bing, Brave, and DuckDuckGo have added AI-powered answers. There are many startups working on people search using AI. Reddit is also leaning heavily into AI-powered search, locking down data on its platform and requiring other companies to sign licensing agreements to train and use its AI.
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LinkedIn is one of the most popular sites for AI demos for AI agents, browsers, and assistants. However, the Microsoft-owned company has not yet placed limits on its data.
“I think we’re still in the early days of the browser era and how browsers work on behalf of people. I think over time we’ll have more robust policies (regarding browsers),” Rajiv said.
“More broadly, I’ve seen a lot of demos that try to infer a person’s LinkedIn network. This is the worst search result ever, so I think it’s a difficult area to find a genuine replacement.”
LinkedIn is rolling out AI-powered people search to premium users in the U.S., with plans to expand to other regions in the coming months. Users with access to this feature will see “Looking for…” instead of “Search” in the search bar.
Search isn’t perfect. You’ll get different results if you use a query like “People who co-founded YC startups” than if you use “Y Combinator” in your query. Also, if you search for “people who co-founded voice AI startups,” you will see several people with the top voice badge on LinkedIn.
The company said it is working on improving the way its search tools understand queries.
