Name: Holiday Shopping: Using AI for Gift Ideas
Uploaded: 2023-11-29T22:08:00Z
Duration: 5 min 26 s
Description: Holiday shopping is in full force, and one place you could turn to for gift ideas is generative AI chatbots. Cordilia James from the WSJ’s personal tech team joins host Julie Chang to discuss how to use AI to make your shopping list and why you should check it twice. Photo: Talia Cotton For The Wall Street Journal

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Holiday shopping is in full force, and one place you could turn to for gift ideas is generative AI chatbots. Cordilia James from the WSJ’s personal tech team joins host Julie Chang to discuss how to use AI to make your shopping list and why you should check it twice. Photo: Talia Cotton For The Wall Street Journal

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Holiday Shopping: Using AI for Gift Ideas

Julie: Welcome to "Tech News Briefing." It's Wednesday, November 29th. I'm Julie Chang for "The Wall Street Journal." The holiday shopping season is upon us, and if you're struggling to come up with gift ideas for your loved ones, one place you could turn to is a generative artificial intelligence chatbox. According to a September analytics survey by Adobe, one in three people have said they plan to use ChatGPT or some other generative AI tool while holiday shopping this year. Cordilia James from our Personal Tech Team has been looking into this and is back with us now for Part 3 of our special AI gift series. If you haven't heard Parts 1 and 2, you can find them on our feed. Just look for the last two Wednesday episodes. So Cordilia, many people have heard of ChatGPT and other similar generative AI chatbots by now. What are some ways you can use these to shop?

Cordilia: So the typical chatbots that we've seen so popular over the past year are definitely useful for product recommendations or, like, summarizing product reviews. So if you want to get something for yourself or a loved one, but you're not sure where to start, these products can definitely offer some suggestions based on what it finds across the web. So for example, if I were to ask the chatbot, "Should I buy the AirPods Pro or like, the latest AirPods Pro?" It can run down, like, a list of pros and cons, like, why should I want it, why I might want to hold back, or maybe why I might wanna consider a different product instead, as well as recommend some alternatives if there are specific needs, maybe, like, a budget that I wanna stick to. And summarizing even what people say about the product online is super helpful information to get from these bots.

Julie: What about the retail companies themselves? How are they using generative AI?

Cordilia: A lot of these retail companies are forming their own chatbot search combinations. So with companies, such as, like, Shopify and Microsoft Copilot, they've recently started launching these chatbots where as you're speaking to it, it's organizing a bunch of the deals or products that are out there with just different retailers and companies all over the web. So it should be an easier way for you to find deals or compare prices or just to have, like, this chatbot guide you through the shopping process.

Julie: And more broadly speaking, were there other generative AI tools that you found while you were researching this topic?

Cordilia: Yeah, so of course, this is only the beginning of us seeing a lot of generative AI in the shopping experience, but there's a lot more things coming. So something that I'm really excited about is this new apparel-focused tool that Google plans on rolling out in Search Labs. Essentially, if you're thinking of some kind of product that you want, but you're not sure if it exists, like, let's say maybe a teal and gray colored sweater of some sort, you can run it through this AI image generator and see some pictures that might be what you're thinking of. And then Google will surface different products online that actually match or are somewhat close to what it is that you're looking for. So it's really exciting to see some of the new ways that we might see generative AI in our shopping experience. Shoppers can expect Google's AI image generator shopping tool in December.

Julie: So Cordilia, you've been testing out all these different tools. How good or useful would you say they are?

Cordilia: So all these newer products that these companies are, like, rolling out testing, trying to make your life easier with shopping, they aren't perfect just yet. So with a lot of these different tools in with the big chatbots themselves, hallucinations still will get in the way sometimes. So if you're trying to, let's say look for deals on something, you know, sometimes these chatbots will either recommend products to you that are kind of outdated, or maybe a deal that they say exists no longer exist. So it's really hard for it to keep up with everything. So definitely take things with a grain of salt. Double check the retailer's website yourself to make sure that you're getting it the best deal. But also feel free to play around with some of these tools 'cause you might end up finding products that are useful to you in some way.

Julie: Since you mentioned hallucinations, did you run into any of them while looking into those Apple AirPods Pro?

Cordilia: Yeah, when it comes to, like, hallucinations, you know, it'll list out some of the features that the AirPods Pro has, and most of them are right, but it could just, like, mix up something that let's say the latest version of AirPods Pro has, like, you know, adaptive audio or, like, just conversation awareness, all these newer features they can use, but if it confuses one of the earlier generations for having those features, little things like that are are possible. So it definitely gives you, like, a good place to start when you're trying to figure out what should you get, what should you not. But still be wary as you're using these tools because sometimes it's a hit or miss.

Julie: That was Cordilia James from our Personal Tech Team. And that's it for "Tech News Briefing." Today's show is produced by me, Julie Chang, with supervising producer Melanie Roy, and additional support from Anthony Bansie. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

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