I Used AI to Do All of My Holiday Shopping

In its initial response, ChatGPT did not provide any product links. But when I asked, it provided them easily, and although I didn’t click on each one, none seemed to be hallucination. Crowder, on the other hand, apologized and said it “cannot actually link directly to the website or product.” Anthropic hasn’t released Claude’s web search feature yet, but the company says it’s in the works.

Technically, this makes Cloud the most useless of the shopping chatbots I’ve tested. But it also means Anthropic has so far avoided wading into ethically murky territory, allowing its artificial intelligence chatbot to scrape human-written product reviews from the web. Instead, Cloud bases its product comparisons on existing data sets. Perplexity, on the other hand, said that with Buy with Pro, people “no longer have to scroll through countless product reviews.”

When I asked Perplexity what I should buy for my editor/musician friend, it recommended a set of solar bike lights (I also noticed he’s a cyclist). It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not exactly a landmark birthday gift either. I’m constantly adjusting my tips. How about a personalized leather guitar strap? I fell down the rabbit hole.

I began to understand that Perplexity’s purpose in advertising its shopping features wasn’t just to help me brainstorm ideas or come up with really thoughtful gifts. Confusion is fighting a long battle, slowly shifting our attention away from the competitive corners of the web to better understand how people like me use its platforms and funnel that data into its ever-evolving artificial intelligence in the model. Every time I need to improve my search, because the initial results are often lacking, I’m still in Perplexity’s app, which means I’m not on Amazon, nor on Google (although I end up on both sites) . Perplexity Pro is not a full-fledged e-commerce site, nor is it “agented” in any real way yet, but I am one of the millions of people who provide the information it needs to become one of these things.

When I turned to Google’s Gemini, I found that its gift recommendations for my 16-year-old niece weren’t bad per se, just uncreative and, in some cases, confusing. It said I should get her a “cat blanket for snuggling up with a good book,” but it wasn’t clear if the blanket was for her or her cat. Kindle is a great idea. But I’m afraid that if I send her Gemini’s suggested SAT prep book (probably a “thank you” and nothing more), she’ll text me. To my editor/musician friend, the idea of ​​the app, which included “vinyl records” and “high-quality headphones,” was equally uninspiring.

I use age Gemini versionBut earlier this month, Google began rolling out an updated version, Gemini 2.0, to developers and limited testers. The company says the new AI model will “think multiple steps ahead and take action on your behalf” explain. For now, that means taking action on behalf of developers – taking the next step in their coding workflow – but I’m eagerly awaiting the day when it can browse my shopping list.

ChatGPT eventually took me to an online spice store where I bought some specialty baking ingredients for my friends, and by this point, I had already built up the idea of ​​being a finalist in my mind. The Great British Bake Off. I ended up chatting with the AI ​​bot for so long that many of the gifts I picked out wouldn’t arrive until after Christmas. My niece will use the card to get cash. I searched for a milestone birthday gift for a friend, but to no avail. I decided to postpone this task until January, a month full of freshness and determination.