Instinct AI startup launches product recommendations feature, faces user backlash

The buzzy AI startup Instinct has just revealed a new potential revenue stream: product recommendations. Unfortunately for the company, the rollout is already rubbing some users the wrong way.

Overnight, the AI agent began pushing product suggestions to users as part of a new feature called Instinct Selections, an effort to curate personalized lists for users in areas like dining, travel, and shopping.

Founder Noah Shinn announced the feature’s debut later Tuesday, explaining that the idea is to partner with “local chefs, designers, architects, travel guides,” and others to bring “human taste” to its product.

In other words, instead of only relying on what the AI could suggest based on its training data gathered from the wider web, the company is partnering with people to offer human-curated suggestions, too. (Instinct didn’t share who, exactly, those human partners are.)

“The next time you’re looking for a restaurant, Instinct can pull from a list handpicked by chefs who know the hidden gems in your area,” Shinn wrote on X.

“If you want to find a new trail to explore, Instinct can draw on recommendations from local guides and suggest a few routes that fit your preferences. And if you’re looking to add some color to your home, Instinct will find pieces from independent designers that match your style, space, and budget,” he continued. “Our goal is to deliver world-class recommendations that are differentiated in quality from what you might find on the internet, and from what other chatbots produce,” he said.

But the initial reaction to these seemingly unsolicited product pushes as not been fully positive.

“I didn’t need to buy carry-on luggage, sunglasses, or a brim hat. This feels so disappointing. At least make me a personalized shopping list of things I actually need!!,” Shruti Gandhi, a general partner at the AI-focused investing firm, Array VC, wrote on X.

Another entrepreneur, Andrew Yeung, confirmed on X that he also received product recommendations that he hadn’t asked for, which can feel off-putting.

A third user, Chat Joglekar, the founder of a business-buying marketplace, wrote, “I had my first ‘ewwww’ moment with an AI assistant when Instinct started to suggest products that I should buy based on what I had in email and upcoming trips.”

The trick to making curated suggestions useful is to make sure they’re something the user is actually asking for, or at least fit in naturally within the current conversation. That way, it feels like the assistant is trying to be helpful, not advertising to you.

If the product suggestions are going to arrive at random intervals, as Instinct’s have been, then they need to be highly personalized, excellent picks — otherwise the user will feel like they’ve been spammed.

That’s not likely to endear users to the AI agent at a time when it’s competing agents from bigger companies, like Meta and, now, OpenAI, which don’t do this.

Instinct didn’t share whether it’s currently making money from these recommendations or plans to, but the feature seems ripe for some sort of advertising, commerce, or affiliate play.

TechCrunch has asked the company for further comment.

The product suggestions launched shortly after Instinct confirmed its most recent financing, a $1 billion Series C round that values the company at $10 billion. The company has not yet said how many people actually use its product, a figure that would help justify that valuation, but in a recent podcast, Shinn noted that the agent regularly handles transactions for its users.

In that same podcast interview, with investor Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Shinn said the platform is approaching a billion dollars in annual transactions made through the agent, and that more than 50% of them are related to travel.