For the last two years, LinkedIn has tried to infuse AI into different parts of its platforms, including ad copies, content creation, personalized digests, hiring assistance, job hunting advice, and learning. The company is now finally adding AI to one of the most-used parts of the site: search.
Earlier this year, the company released a job search tool for members in the U.S., allowing them to search for jobs using natural language queries. Now, the company is extending the feature to people search.
Users can use queries like “Find me investors in the healthcare sector with FDA experience,” people who “co-founded a productivity company and are based in NYC,” or “Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks.”
Until now, LinkedIn’s search has been more complicated. You can type in a few words to find the right people or rely on many different LinkedIn filters in the hope of getting the right results. Plus, you also have to think about what kinds of words you might want to use to get the best out of the search system.
“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 TechCrunch over a call.
The company said in its early testing, it has seen people use this to find others who can help them with their next job opportunity, expand their business, or boost their career prospects.
Search has been one area where all internet platforms have been rushing to add AI. Seeing people gravitate toward chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, incumbent search engines like Google, Bing, Brave, and DuckDuckGo have added AI-powered answers. There are plenty of startups working on AI-powered people search as well. Reddit has also leaned heavily into AI-powered search and locked down its platform’s data, asking other companies to sign a licensing agreement for AI training and usage.
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LinkedIn is one of the most used sites in AI demos for AI agents, browsers, and assistants. However, the Microsoft-owned company has not put restrictions on its data just yet.
“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.”
LinkedIn is rolling out AI-powered people search to premium users in the U.S. with plans to expand it to other geographies in the coming months. People who will have access to this feature will see “I’m looking for…” in the search bar instead of “Search.”
The search is not perfect. You will get different results when you use a query like “people who co-founded a YC startup” as compared to using “Y Combinator” in the query. Also, when you search for “people who co-founded a voice AI startup,” some folks who have a LinkedIn top voice badge show up.
The company said it is working on improving the way the search tool understands the query.
