How to make holiday shopping easier this year with the help of AI

The holidays are around the corner, which means it’s time to start holiday shopping.

If that gets you stressed, artificial intelligence might just be the secret to simplifying your gift hunt.

Look at AI as your personal assistant: It can help find the perfect holiday gift for loved ones, saving a lot of time and money, but it comes with a caveat.

“For you to look at 50 different websites is going to take a significant amount of time,” said Michael Todasco, a visiting fellow at the AI Center at SDSU. “But for a computer system like artificial intelligence, they can do this in no time, in milliseconds, and that is the big difference.”

Todasco said the main difference between an Internet search and AI is personalization.

“You can actually say, ‘Hey, Gemini, these are the type of credit cards I have, these are the cash-back deals I have. I use Rakuten and Honey,’ or whatever it might be that you use,” Todasco said. ” ‘Can you tell me all the potential discounts>’ and have it do the research for you.”

Shoppers can even upload a picture of an item and ask AI to look for deals or discounts.

Don’t forget, though, that AI is not perfect. AI chatbots can hallucinate and recommend items that do not match your request or supply outdated pricing information

“You just have to do a little bit of homework yourself,” Todasco said. “Ultimately, in the end, we need to have agency in this. It isn’t an all-knowing oracle. It gets things wrong, it is not perfect, but it’s really helpful.”

What about scams?

You have to be an AI smart shopper: Don’t click on all the links AI is suggesting.

“You can always just take the product that it’s suggesting, copy that, paste it in the browser directly to a site that you’re comfortable shopping from, and buy from there,” Todasco said.

The more specific you are in what you ask of AI, the better answers you’ll get. For example, you can ask AI to only look at Consumer Reports reviews, or suggest gifts for a specific person.

“You can also always buy locally, as well, if you want to,” Todasco said. “You could use this almost as a list and say, ‘Hey, what stores in my area are likely to carry this product?’ “

Something else you need to know about: Some AI tools are allowing companies to buy ads to appear at the top of searches, so pay close attention to the results.