Santa has a new little helper. But can an AI-powered shopping assistant really master the subtle art of gift giving?
Some people love buying Christmas presents. Polly Arrowsmith starts making a note of what her friends and family like, then hunts for bargains, slowly and carefully. Vie Portland begins her shopping in January and has a theme each year, from heart mirrors to inspirational books. And Betsy Benn spent so much time thinking about presents, she ended up opening her own online gift business.
How would these gift-giving experts react to a trend that is either a timesaving brainwave or an appalling corruption of the Christmas spirit: asking ChatGPT to do it for them?
The answer, like Christmas Day, will have to wait. But are people really asking ChatGPT to write their Christmas lists? It seems so. There are dozens of custom prompts on Open AI's tool for people to generate Christmas gift lists and a flurry of Reddit posts from people searching for inspiration through a conversation with a chatbot.
Are many people doing this? ChatGPT's bot didn't know, or if it did, it wasn't telling the Observer. Open AI's spokesperson didn't know either, but said people had also been making Christmas quizzes, designing cards and crafting "creative responses" to their children's letters to Santa. (Other AI chatbots - Google's Gemini and Perplexity AI - were similarly ignorant.)
Even if only a handful of people are doing it so far, the AI companies expect more to start soon. Last week, Perplexity launched "Buy with Pro" in the US, an AI shopping assistant that will let users research products, then buy them on Perplexity's website, for $20 a month.
This move, days before the peak of the Black Friday retail frenzy, is a direct assault on Google's online advertising stranglehold, according to Jai Khan, a director at Push, a Âdigital marketing agency.
"Some people start their shopping journeys on Amazon, and some young people use TikTok, but Google has been the dominant player," he said. "The big thing for us is what happens to Google ads if people start going to ChatGPT for answers."
There are reams of Christmas gift guides online predicting which products will be the subject of the annual toy hysteria (look out for revivals of Furbies and Beyblade spinning tops, a waddling mother duck with ducklings and a fart blaster), while Lego's Wicked range is flying off the shelves.
Searching online is a small part of present shopping for Portland, a 53-year-old confidence coach from Winchester. "I tend to shop all year round for gifts - it's very frustrating when you find the perfect gift in February, only for it to be out of production in December," she said. "It helps with budget, too."
Benn hates the idea of straight-to-charity-shop gifts. "I want my loved ones to feel truly seen, truly appreciated for their own quirks," she said. The 49-year-old from Cheltenham founded betsybenn.com, a business selling personalised gifts such as Christmas tree decorations.
"The joy when the recipient knows this is just for them and not a hastily grabbed bottle of wine in a festive gift bag is an unbeatable feeling. And don't we all just want to be seen and understood? Isn't that the whole point of human connection?"
The problem - as anyone getting a can of deodorant, an out-of-date voucher or red underwear two sizes too big will know - is that gifts too often demonstrate the giver has Âneither seen nor understood.
"Between 60% and 70% of people get shopping for Christmas presents wrong," said Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. "Looking at shopping patterns, the majority of people leave it to the last minute and that just shows they have no idea what they are going to buy anyway."
Add in the confusion of trying to fathom what someone of an entirely different generation might enjoy and it's easy to see why an AI-generated list could be a solution to this complex social negotiation.
"The reality is, AI is a tool that's harvesting data off the internet and comes up with two plus two equals four," Jansson-Boyd said. "It can't do emotion, it can't do personalisation, because they can't be quantified.
"Having said that, I think it's a great idea, because we often run out of ideas ourselves."
Faced with this kind of problem - a YouGov poll last year found 45% of Christmas shoppers were stressed about gift shopping - some people opt out entirely and just tell people what they want.
Deciding what you might want is itself a form of terror for some. AI may be a solution there too, as most AI bots give users the option of remembering conversations and using them to inform future responses.
"You can ask ChatGPT, 'Tell me something about myself I don't know,'" Khan said. "The insights you get back are fascinating."
We could reach a point where heavy users find their best chance of being seen and understood is by their AI bot.
So how did the Observer's gift gurus cope with ChatGPT?
Arrowsmith was unimpressed with the suggestions for her sister. It suggested Neom candles "but the prices were considerably higher than I bought yesterday on Black Friday deals", she said. "Everything was so generic. I have bought her designer bags, not generic tote bags.
"I also repeated the exercise for my dad: 83, male with a few interests," she said. "It assumed he might like a foot massage machine, a personalised walking stick, a meal delivery service, or a newspaper subscription. My dad would wonder why I bought him any of these things, as he buys his own subscriptions, does his food shopping, and walks 20,000 steps a day."
Portland asked what she could get a "time-poor mum of disabled children" and thought the suggestions of spa days and long baths were inappropriate. "It may be what she needs, but not what she has time for," she said. Other options were cleaning services, food delivery boxes and clothes, creating "a risk of offence, with getting the size wrong".
"And there was a suggestion of gifts for her children - I wouldn't do that. That just makes it all about her as a mum, and not as an individual."
Benn found the way to avoid cliched, generic gifts was to keep asking questions.
"When you start adding interests or personalities, you get much better results - I love that," she said. "You might find an amazing hit on your first go, or find yourself inspired by some of the suggestions and follow the rabbit hole to something epic.
"If someone said they'd used AI to help them find a gift for me, just the fact they'd thought about me, sat down, explored options and found something they thought perfect, well, it would fill my heart to the brim."
