Strategies used for search and on-line discovery in Southeast Asia are altering from conventional channels, with platforms just like the Seize app enjoying a rising function. Reasonably than customers typing queries into engines like google or scrolling by means of social media, many are starting to depend on in-app suggestions to steer their consuming habits, the place they go, and the way they journey.
At its GrabX 2026 occasion, Seize Holdings launched 13 new AI-driven options designed to alter how customers work together with its platform. The updates handle areas like transport, meals supply, and funds. Seize is positioning its app as a system that recommends and surfaces selections somewhat than offering easy responses.
Transactions and proposals
Seize is commonly used to perform particular duties. Customers may open the app to seek for meals or a experience and full a transaction. The set of instruments described as “On a regular basis AI Companions” will counsel locations to eat, assist plan journeys, and supply steerage primarily based on a person’s habits and placement. In response to Seize’s announcement, the objective is to assist “native life, journey and enterprise” by means of AI-driven help.
Options like Seize’s Uncover feed and in-app assistants can suggest eating places and present evaluations and not using a direct search. Options are primarily based on previous orders, time of day, and placement information.
Whereas suggestion programs are usually not new (TikTok and Amazon use comparable strategies), Seize combines discovery and transaction in a single place.
Competitors with search and social
As Seize expands its suggestion instruments, it overlaps extra with engines like google and social platforms. Customers who depend on Seize to decide on a restaurant might use Google or Meta platforms much less. The choice as a substitute might occur contained in the ‘superapp’. This creates a brand new kind of competitors round how customers uncover providers.
In response to Seize, the system is powered by what it calls an “Intelligence Layer,” constructed utilizing information from over 20 billion rides and orders in its community. The system makes use of that information to personalise solutions. The extra customers depend on suggestions, the extra the app will affect which companies are introduced to customers. Companies listed on Seize will rely extra on how the system ranks or recommends them, embedding an growing diploma of reliance on the platform and its opaque algorithms.
Advertising and marketing contained in the Seize app
The updates additionally work on the behalf of retailers, offering AI assistants that may monitor retailer efficiency and counsel actions. One instance is a “digital retailer supervisor” that helps observe orders and flag potential points. Different instruments use laptop imaginative and prescient to watch retailer circumstances, like cleanliness or foot visitors.
These talents sit alongside promotions and adverts, making up the app’s fundamental advertising and marketing and operations layer.
Small and medium-sized companies that depend on Seize for gross sales can use Seize’s instruments as a substitute of separate programs for analytics and operations.
Seize’s AI push additionally contains instruments for drivers. New voice assistants present hands-free route solutions and real-time updates. Whereas these options are usually not instantly linked to advertising and marketing, they are going to affect service high quality and model notion.
Over time, enhancements in service might affect retention and repeat use, which in flip impacts how typically customers work together with suggestions contained in the app.
Getting found on Seize
The broader affect of those adjustments is a change in how manufacturers attain clients. Conventional digital advertising and marketing depends on search rankings, social media content material, or paid advertisements. In Seize’s mannequin, discovery occurs by means of an inside system that selects and presents choices to customers. As an alternative of solely optimising for exterior platforms, manufacturers may have to think about how they seem in Seize’s ecosystem. Components like buyer rankings and engagement within the app might play a bigger function.
Advice programs additionally increase questions on transparency, as companies have direct clarification of how they’re ranked or why their services or products could also be advised.
Subsequent for the Seize app
The options introduced at GrabX are nonetheless within the early levels of rollout, with availability anticipated to fluctuate by market. Their affect will rely on how they’re adopted and the way properly they carry out in day by day use. Even so, Seize is utilizing AI to enhance effectivity and to alter how customers uncover and select providers. If customers depend on these programs for on a regular basis selections, Seize might play a bigger function through which manufacturers are seen and chosen.
(Photograph by Farel Yesha)
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