I used AI to do all my holiday shopping

In its initial responses, ChatGPT did not provide any links to products. But they were readily available when I asked, and while I didn’t click on every one of them, none of them seemed to get done Hallucinations. Claude, on the other hand, apologized and said he “can’t actually link to the websites or products directly.” Anthropic hasn’t released a web search feature for Claude yet, but the company says it’s working on it.

This technically makes Cloud the least useful shopping chatbot I’ve tested. But it also means that Anthropic has so far avoided wading into the ethically gray area of ​​letting AI chatbots scrape human-written product reviews from the web. Instead, Claude bases his product comparisons on his existing data set. On the other hand, Perplexity says that thanks to the Buy with Pro service, “people no longer have to browse through countless product reviews.”

When I asked Perplexity what I should get for my editor/musician friend, she recommended a solar bike light set (I also pointed out that he was a cyclist). It wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t a worthy birthday present. I kept adjusting my claim. How about a custom leather guitar strap? I went down the rabbit hole.

I began to understand that Perplexity’s goal in enhancing its shopping features wasn’t just to help me come up with new ideas or come up with extremely thoughtful gifts. Confusion is playing the long game, slowly pulling our attention away from competing corners of the web, gaining a better understanding of how people like me use its platform, and funneling that data into ever-evolving AI models. Every time I needed to refine my searches because the initial results were often incomplete, I would stay in the Perplexity app, which meant I was not on Amazon and not on Google (although I ended up on both sites in the end). Perplexity Pro isn’t a full-fledged e-commerce site, nor is it an “agent” in any real way yet, but I’m one of millions of people providing the information it needs to become those things.

When I turned to Google’s Gemini website, I found that the gifts I suggested for my 16-year-old niece weren’t bad, per se, just uncreative and, in one case, confusing. I was told I should buy her a “cat blanket to curl up with a good book,” but it wasn’t clear if the blanket was for her or her cat. The Kindle was a good idea. But I’m terrified of what she’ll send me if I send her the SAT prep book Jiminy suggested (maybe “thx”, nothing else). My editor/musician friend’s app ideas were equally uninspiring, including “vinyl records” and “high-quality headphones.”

I was using the year old Gemini versionbut earlier this month, Google began rolling out a newer version, Gemini 2.0, to limited developers and testers. The new AI model will “think several steps ahead and take action on your behalf,” the company said He says. For now, this means taking action on behalf of developers — implementing the next step in their programming workflow — but I eagerly await the day when my shopping list can be browsed.

ChatGPT eventually led me to an online spice shop where I purchased some specialty baking ingredients for my friend, who at this point, I had built up in my mind to be one of the finalists in Great British baking. Eventually, I talked to the AI ​​bots for so long that many of the gifts I chose wouldn’t arrive until after Christmas. My niece will receive cash via card. My search for a friend’s birthday gift was inconclusive. I decided to hit the road through January, a month full of newness and active determination.