Instinct's New Product Pushes Are Annoying Its Users

Instinct, an AI startup valued at $10 billion after its latest $1 billion Series C round, has launched a product recommendation feature — and users are already complaining it feels like spam.

The feature, called Instinct Selections, began pushing product suggestions to users overnight as part of a new effort to curate personalized lists across dining, travel, and shopping. Founder Noah Shinn announced the rollout Tuesday, framing it as a way to bring "human taste" to the AI agent's recommendations.

The problem: several users say they never asked for these suggestions, and the unsolicited pitches are landing badly with exactly the audience a rising startup needs to keep.

What Is Instinct Selections?

Instinct Selections is the company's attempt to move beyond recommendations generated purely from the AI's training data. Instead of drawing only on what the model learned from the wider web, Instinct is partnering with people — Shinn described them as "local chefs, designers, architects, travel guides" and others — to offer human-curated suggestions alongside the AI's own output.

The company did not share who, exactly, those human partners are.

Shinn laid out the vision in a series of posts on X:

• "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."
• "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."
• "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."

"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," Shinn said.

That is a direct competitive claim. Shinn is positioning Instinct's curation as superior to both conventional web search results and the outputs of rival chatbots — a meaningful bet at a moment when AI agents from Meta and OpenAI are fighting for the same users, and neither of those competitors does this.

Why Are Users Pushing Back?

The initial reaction to the rollout has not been positive, and the complaints share a common thread: the recommendations arrived unprompted.

Shruti Gandhi, a general partner at the AI-focused investing firm Array VC, wrote on X: "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!!"

Entrepreneur Andrew Yeung confirmed on X that he also received product recommendations he hadn't asked for.

Chat Joglekar, founder of a business-buying marketplace, was blunter: "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."

Joglekar's complaint cuts to the sharpest issue in this rollout: Instinct's suggestions appear to draw on private user context — email contents and travel plans — and surface commerce pitches the user never requested.

When Do AI Recommendations Work?

The mechanics of a well-received recommendation are not mysterious. Curated suggestions tend to land when they respond to something the user is actually asking for, or when they fit naturally into the current conversation. In those cases, the assistant reads as helpful.

When suggestions arrive at random intervals, as Instinct's have been, the bar rises sharply. They need to be highly personalized, excellent picks — otherwise the user feels spammed. That is precisely the reaction Instinct is getting in these first days.

The stakes are higher than a single awkward feature launch. Instinct is competing against agents from bigger companies, including Meta and now OpenAI, and those competitors don't push unsolicited products at users. A perception of intrusive advertising could differentiate Instinct in the worst direction.

Is This a Commerce Play?

Instinct did not share whether it is currently making money from these recommendations or plans to. But the feature looks built for monetization — advertising, commerce, or an affiliate model would all fit an agent that already handles purchases on users' behalf.

TechCrunch has asked the company for further comment.

What Does the $10 Billion Valation Rest On?

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 said how many people actually use its product — a figure that would help justify that valuation. But in a recent podcast interview with investor Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Shinn offered a proxy for scale: the platform is approaching a billion dollars in annual transactions made through the agent, and more than 50% of them relate to travel.

Those transaction numbers explain why recommendations matter commercially. An agent that already moves roughly a billion dollars a year in purchases, with travel as its largest category, sits in a natural position to influence what users buy — and to monetize that influence. The open question is whether Instinct can convert that position into revenue without the recommendations feeling like ads.

For now, the company's first attempt has produced the opposite of "world-class" word of mouth. Whether Instinct tunes the timing and targeting of Selections, or lets unsolicited pitches keep eroding goodwill, will determine if this becomes a revenue stream or a reputational liability.