LinkedIn’s New AI-powered People Search Marks a Significant Leap in How Professionals Discover Talent and Build Networks

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Premium LinkedIn users in the U.S. now have access to a brand-new AI-enhanced People Search tool designed to deliver sharper, more relevant professional matches. The update marks LinkedIn’s biggest push yet toward AI-driven networking.

LinkedIn AI-Powered People Search Tool

LinkedIn announced the launch of AI-powered people search, which is a new way to make finding the right person easier than ever. Users can now simply type what they’re looking for in plain language. For example, prompts such as “someone who’s grown a small business” or “an expert in digital marketing”? Can provide leads on this networking platform. 

Earlier, people had to provide hyper-specific information, like a company name, job title, or a credential, to search for people. Without this information, search results would fail.

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LinkedIn will now show people with the right expertise, at the right time, turning connections into actionable opportunities.

AI-powered people search is now available to Premium subscribers in the US, with plans to expand availability in the coming months.

AI-driven Networking Potential

This AI-powered feature unlocks the full potential of the world’s largest professional network. “Whether launching a business, switching careers, or planning your next move, members can now find someone who’s done it and can help them get there,” mentioned a blog post by LinkedIn.

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“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 news agencies.

“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 added.

“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,” he also mentioned during the conversation.

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Global Firms Adopting AI-powered Search

People, over the years, gravitate toward chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, and search engines like Google, Bing, Brave, and DuckDuckGo have also added AI-powered responses. 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.

The company said it is working on improving the way the search tool understands the query. As AI continues to reshape the future of work, LinkedIn’s latest upgrade signals a broader shift toward intelligent networking, one where precision, personalization, and speed define how opportunities are found and connections are made.