Could Marketplace Become an AI Discovery Agent?

justinroyal​ and kc_msft​ 

It’s great to see Marketplace taking this route and applying AI to the app search experience. I think this has a lot of potential, but it also seems clear that the feature is still quite early in its development.

From what I can see, the category appears to be determined largely from the wording used in the search query. This means that if the user doesn’t happen to use the terminology that matches the expected category, they can end up with no results, even though there may be relevant apps in the Marketplace.

This makes me wonder how much the AI is currently analyzing the actual product information, particularly the product description, capabilities, and features, versus primarily matching the search text against predefined categories or keywords.

For an AI-driven Marketplace search, I would expect the product description and its underlying meaning to play a significant role. For example, a user may describe what they want to accomplish in completely different terms from how the app is described or categorized, and the AI should ideally be able to make that connection.

So I think the direction is very promising, but it would be interesting to understand whether semantic analysis of the full product description is currently part of the search process, or whether that is something planned for a later stage.