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Your Secret Weapon This Holiday Shopping Season Could Be… ChatGPT?
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
With AI models like ChatGPT, you can describe at length what you’re looking for — even if you don’t exactly know what that is yet.
As we approach the holidays, artificial intelligence is taking center stage. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse — well, that depends on how the burgeoning technology is used.
On one hand, Coca-Cola is facing fierce backlash after it used generative AI to reimagine its beloved 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” campaign. On the other, some proponents of AI say that the very same tool can reduce the stress of one of the biggest holiday to-dos: shopping for gifts.
John Licato, a computer engineering associate professor and AI researcher at the University of South Florida, recommends using AI to help you pick the perfect gift for friends or family.
“You can refine the AI’s suggestions by giving feedback, helping it become more accurate in offering thoughtful, tailored gift ideas,” Licato said in a news release.
Recent data from Adobe suggests that many online shoppers are already asking AI to help them pick products. AI referrals to retail sites have increased eightfold since 2023; the software firm expects the trend to pick up even more this holiday season.
In fact, a recent survey from Debt.com found that 65% of shoppers said they were willing to spend more than usual on a gift if AI gave them an ideal recommendation.
How to use AI to buy Christmas presents
By now, most folks are accustomed to using Google to do basic product research, probably by pecking in “best” followed by whatever type of product they’re searching for. In milliseconds, Google populates pages and pages of results, usually topped by several sponsored products.
But AI works a little differently. And not all AI chatbots are created equally. Licato recommends using reputable ones like ChatGPT and Claude, which use advanced language-learning models that are trained with extensive amounts of data and have real-time access to the internet.
Many retailers now have their own on-site AI chatbots. Take Amazon’s shopping-assistant chatbot, Rufus, for example. Rufus can help you search for products… but only ones on Amazon.com.
In some cases, these retailer-run AI tools might not be as advanced as ChatGPT, or they may have different goals such as only selling you products offered on the site.
When you’ve decided on which AI tool you want to use, tell it a little bit about your shopping goals and budget.
According to RetailWire’s holiday shopping forecast, one major perk of using a tool like ChatGPT over a regular search engine is that AI uses natural language, not just a few key words. You can describe at length what you’re looking for — even if you don’t exactly know what that is yet. You can also feed the chatbot as much information about the person you’re shopping for as you want.
Basic facts like their interests, relation to you, hobbies and more can go a long way in getting tailored gift ideas (though Licato suggests using only publicly available information on the person if you have privacy concerns).
After you’ve homed in on the item you want, you can get even more specific recommendations. The chatbot can also help you compare prices across retailers if it’s hooked up to live search engines. Just make sure the pricing is accurate. Licato recommends asking the chatbot to provide links directly to the site so you can double check.
Once you get the perfect gift, all that’s left is deciding whether to tell the recipient that ChatGPT came up with the idea.
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 300 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on some of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Best Hospitals. He regularly contributes data reporting for Best Colleges, Best Banks and other lists as well. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.