Yelp Launches AI Chatbot for Review Searches

San Francisco-based Yelp Inc. launched an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot on Monday to help users sift through its vast collection of 330 million local business reviews, aiming to simplify searches for recommendations on restaurants, services and other merchants.

The new assistant addresses the challenge of information overload by quickly analyzing reviews and providing tailored suggestions alongside supporting evidence. For example, a query for a dog-friendly coffee spot would yield recommendations paired with relevant user comments. "This chatbot can really understand 500 reviews in a second, whereas a consumer might say, 'Well, I read the first five reviews, so I guess that's good enough,'" said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who co-founded the company in 2004 with Russel Simmons.

Yelp developed the tool to differentiate itself from competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity's answer engine and Google's AI overviews, which also summarize large datasets. The company's version emphasizes transparency by citing specific reviews that inform its responses, responding to consumer concerns about AI-generated misinformation. A recent survey indicated that...