Can AI Really Handle Your Holiday Shopping?
One of the major promises of the next era of generative AI is its potential to perform tasks autonomously, offering convenience and efficiency to busy individuals. From planning schedules to brainstorming ideas, AI tools are being heralded as the ultimate personal assistants. But how well can they handle something as personal and nuanced as holiday shopping?
While shopping is a joyful activity for some, for many of us it can become overwhelming, especially during the high-pressure holiday season. The challenge of selecting thoughtful gifts that capture appreciation and sentiment often feels like a daunting task. That’s why I decided to let AI chatbots take over my holiday shopping this year, putting tools like Perplexity AI, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Amazon’s Rufus to the test.
The AI Shopping Experiment
Over a few weeks, I tested these AI tools for gifts for five individuals, ranging in age from 6 months to 49 years. My main goal? To outsource one of the most stressful parts of the holidays: finding the perfect gift. Each AI tool brought something unique to the table, but none were quite the seamless shopping agents I had envisioned.
For example, Perplexity AI recently introduced a feature called Buy with Pro, which promises to make online shopping easier and more enjoyable. However, while the AI could summarize product descriptions and compare items, I still needed to refine my prompts multiple times and complete the checkout process manually. Similarly, Amazon’s Rufus AI provided quick suggestions but lacked the nuance required to truly personalize gift ideas.
When AI Gets It Right
Among the tools I tested, OpenAI’s ChatGPT stood out as the most creative and thoughtful. When asked for gift ideas for a friend who loves baking, ChatGPT offered a categorized list of suggestions such as a handmade ceramic mixing bowl, premium spice sets, and a recipe journal. These ideas felt genuine and personal, making the chatbot more of a brainstorming partner than a shopping assistant.
However, not all tools were as effective. Claude, for instance, struggled with providing actionable shopping suggestions due to its lack of web search capabilities. While it avoided ethical concerns around scraping product reviews, it also made it less practical for real-time shopping needs.
The Limitations of Current AI Shopping Tools
Despite their promise, today’s AI chatbots are far from being true autonomous shopping agents. They are essentially advanced search tools that require human input at every stage. Whether it’s refining queries, selecting products, or completing transactions, the user still has to do much of the heavy lifting.
Take Perplexity AI’s shopping feature, for example. While it aggregated results from sources like The New York Times and Reddit, its output often required additional tweaking to make the suggestions relevant. Similarly, Google’s Gemini, though powerful in its search capabilities, offered generic ideas that lacked the creativity needed for unique gift-giving.
Why AI Shopping Still Has a Long Road Ahead
One of the significant hurdles in AI-powered shopping is its inability to truly understand emotional nuances and individual preferences. For instance, while AI might suggest a KitchenAid Stand Mixer for a baking enthusiast, it may fail to consider whether the recipient already owns one or prefers a more niche, artisanal product.
Moreover, the reliance on scraping content from external sources raises ethical questions about data usage. While tools like ChatGPT generate ideas based on a pre-trained dataset, others like Perplexity actively pull information from the web, sometimes without proper attribution.
The Future of AI in E-Commerce
While these tools are not yet ready to fully automate holiday shopping, they offer a glimpse into what the future might hold. Enhanced personalization, seamless integration with e-commerce platforms, and improved ethical standards could make AI a powerful ally for shoppers. For now, though, it seems we’re still a few steps away from fully delegating this labor-intensive task to a machine.
For a broader look at how tech giants are shaping the AI landscape, check out our post on How Big Tech is Reshaping AI Regulations: A Deep Dive into 2025.
As for my holiday shopping experiment? Let’s just say my niece is getting cash in a card this year, and some gifts might arrive fashionably late. AI may not yet be the perfect shopping assistant, but it’s certainly an intriguing—and occasionally helpful—tool to explore.