The professional network is swapping out its rigid keyword search for a ‘conversational co-pilot’—a move that could fundamentally change how we network.

We’ve all been there. You’re trying to find someone on LinkedIn, but you don’t know their name. You know of them—maybe they’re a “product manager at Google who used to work at my old company” or “an expert in climate tech investing.” In the past, finding them was a digital scavenger hunt, a frustrating game of guessing the right keywords.

Not anymore.

LinkedIn is launching an AI-powered search feature that allows you to find people by describing who you’re looking for. Now, instead of searching for an exact name, job title, or company, you can enter a more descriptive search, such as “Northwestern alumni who work in entertainment marketing,” or even pose a question, like “Who can help me understand the US work visa system?”

This is a massive shift from how LinkedIn search has historically worked, and it’s a bigger deal than it sounds.

Until now, the real power-users of LinkedIn—especially recruiters and salespeople—relied on a special language called “Boolean search.”

It’s a system that uses logical operators like AND, OR, and NOT to build highly specific queries. A typical search for a recruiter might look like this:

("Software Engineer" OR "Developer") AND ("FinTech" OR "Banking") AND (Java OR Python) NOT ("Entry Level" OR "Junior")

This is incredibly powerful if you know how to write it, but let’s be honest, it’s not human-readable. It forces you to think like a database, not a person. For the average user, it’s completely inaccessible, leaving the platform’s full networking potential untapped.

This new AI-powered update throws that rigid logic out the window. It’s designed to understand your intent, not just your keywords.

When you type a conversational query, the AI isn’t just matching words; it’s parsing your request and pulling from the vast dataset of LinkedIn’s “Economic Graph.” It understands concepts like seniority, industry, skills, and relationships.

From there, LinkedIn will use AI to surface the best matches for your query. LinkedIn senior director of product management Rohan Rajiv tells The Verge that the platform will rank results based on the connections you might have with someone, as well as their relevance to your search.

This means the results should, in theory, be the people you actually can connect with or who are most likely to help you, not just a random list of profiles that match a keyword.

This isn’t LinkedIn’s first experiment with this technology. This move is the logical next step in a broader AI-first strategy, likely supercharged by its parent company, Microsoft.

LinkedIn launched an AI-enhanced job search in May, allowing people to look for job openings by describing their ideal career. You could search for things like “a remote marketing job with a good work-life balance that pays over $100,000.”

Extending AI to people search should make it a lot easier to find someone who might be able to help you with a particular task, or if you’re looking for a potential connection in a field you’re interested in.

For recruiters, this is a game-changer. It democratizes the power of Boolean search, allowing any hiring manager to find “a mid-level product manager in New York with payments experience” just by asking. But for the everyday user, it finally unlocks the social part of the professional social network, making it a practical tool for finding mentors, experts, and “warm introductions.”

So, what’s the catch?

Here it is: for now, this power is reserved for paying customers.

LinkedIn is rolling out AI-powered people search to Premium users in the US starting Nov. 13th, but the platform plans on bringing it to all users soon.

This move creates a significant new value proposition for a LinkedIn Premium subscription. While “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” was a nice perk, having an AI-powered networking assistant is a genuine productivity tool. It’s a clear signal that LinkedIn sees AI as its future, and for now, that future comes with a monthly fee.