Yelp announces new AI-powered features coming to its platform

Yelp has announced a new set of AI-related updates, calling it its "biggest leap yet toward transforming local discovery."

Before this update, the Yelp Assistant, introduced in April last year, could only help users connect with service professionals by diagnosing their project needs. You could tell it you needed a plumber, and it would ask clarifying questions before finding you a pro. Now, the LLM-powered chatbot is available directly on non-service business pages, letting you get instant answers about restaurants, shops, and local attractions.

You can ask it specific questions like "Is there outdoor seating?" or "What vegetarian options do they have?" and it will summarize information from reviews, photos, and even the business's own website. Yelp is also updating the services assistant with a memory feature, so it can recall details from past projects, like your car's model or that you prefer eco-friendly cleaning products.

Another AI feature coming to the Yelp app on both iOS and Android is Menu Vision. When you point your phone's camera at a physical menu, bubbles that you can tap to see photos and review snippets for specific dishes will appear on the screen. Yelp plans to expand the feature next year to show reviews for popular drinks and desserts.

The Popular Dishes and Popular Drinks features are getting expanded to include a new LLM-powered Popular Offerings section. This system scans a business's reviews to highlight the most frequently mentioned services or items, giving you a quick snapshot of what people like.

On desktop, the feature is tucked away in the "Most mentioned" section for "select businesses" across categories that have at least three popular offerings with enough pictures and reviews to showcase. While on mobile (iOS only for now), Popular Offerings is available for categories Yelp says include pet services, event services, hotels and travel, and beauty.

Search on Yelp is also improving with support for natural language queries, allowing you to type in conversational requests up to 128 characters long. The company is also bringing your voice into the mix with a new function on iOS. You can now tap a microphone icon and speak your search query, like "I need help fixing a leaky faucet", and the app will transcribe it and find relevant businesses.

Other features include two new AI-powered call answering solutions for businesses called Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist, which can manage bookings and qualify customer leads. The company is also integrating booking for auto shops through its RepairPal acquisition and using AI to group before-and-after photos for service pros.