After a particular poor performance in his fourth quarter earnings, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready tried to favorably compare the digital pinboarding site to the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Trying to highlight its potential as a unique search destination, Ready stated that the site sees a larger search volume than ChatGPT. According to third-party data, ChatGPT sees 75 billion searches per month, while Pinterest sees 80 billion searches and generates 1.7 billion monthly clicks, he said.

“That makes us one of the largest search destinations in the world. And importantly, more than half of the searches are commercial in nature, compared to, I think … approximately 2% (of ChatGPT searches),” Ready added.

Pinterest in the fourth quarter missed expectations on both revenue and earnings per share, reporting $1.32 billion in revenue versus $1.33 billion expected, and earnings per share of 67 cents, compared to 69 cents projected. It also predicted that first quarter 2026 sales would come in between $951 million to $971 million, below the $980 million expected.

The company blamed its shortage on larger advertisers pulling back on spending, particularly in Europe, and a new furniture tariff implemented in October that caused issues within the home category. It says the trends may worsen in the first quarter.

Surprisingly, Pinterest is losing revenue despite a user base that is growing faster than expected. The company reported monthly active users up 12% year over year to 619 million, when Wall Street predicted 613 million users.

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Pinterest has long struggled to translate its platform’s high usage into ad dollars, because its users often come to Pinterest to plan and dream, not shop and buy. That challenge will become even more acute in the age of AI, especially if advertisers shift their dollars to platforms where the purchase intent is clearer — such as chatbot requests asking for product recommendations.

When asked how Pinterest is navigating the shift toward AI-powered shopping, Ready pointed to the company’s visual search, discovery, and personalization features, which he said will point users to relevant products when they open the app.

“We help them complete commercial journeys without having to type in a prompt,” he said, noting that Pinterest also benefits from an easy checkout flow that comes from its partnership with Amazon. He said customers don’t seem ready to let an AI shop for them, but said Pinterest will be ready when that time comes.

“That’s actually one of the easiest parts of the commercial journey to tackle,” he said.