I get that some individuals find shopping to be enjoyable, but the choices are too numerous for me, whether I’m in a real shop or stuck on an infinite scroll. How can you express to someone how much you appreciate them over the course of the holidays and display that understanding in a way that is more intelligent than a soybean wax candle? I was prepared to allow AI take the wheel.
Over the last few months, I’ve offloaded my present searching to Perplexity AI, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Amazon’s Rufus to find out whether I was finally representative one of the things I despise the most to AI. I used the apps as true utilities, for precise accomplishment, means to a business end. In a quest to find the ideal cooking products, I set the conceptual AI machines to work and burned Earth.
Teaser: I quickly learned that none of these applications is freely purchase, at least never yet. They are glorified research tools that can analyze and describe product descriptions as well as review various products. For the most part, I also had to enter my payment information and go through the checkout process on each specific company’s website, which meant I had to write and rewrite the causes for what kinds of gifts I wanted.
I used the machines to shop for five people, ranging in age from 6 weeks to 49 years old. One of my main check cases was a close friend who is a huge baker. I even tried to drum up holiday gift ideas for my 16-year-old sister, who after complimented me in a text message by saying,” Don’t worry, you’re not late”. ( I have the screenshot saved. ) An writer and composer friend with eclectic tastes who is having a significant holiday just before the new year was another item on my shopping list.
One of the AI programs I tested has a shopping-specific feature. A well-known generative AI search startup called Perplexity AI, which has been criticized for allegedly removing content from news publishers, unveiled a new service called Buy with Pro, which comes with a$ 20 monthly subscription to Perplexity Pro. Get with Pro is described as a “first-of-its type AI business knowledge” that promises to make buying online” 10x more simple and fun”. Because online shopping isn’t enjoyment in the first place, this promptly sounded like an Artificial dream to me. ( In terms of disclosure, Buy with Pro and other AI gift guides are also technically competitors with WIRED, which earns affiliate revenue from our entirely human-produced, human-reviewed, and human-edited gift guides. )
When you run a shopping-related comment on Perplexity Pro, the game shows that it’s “reading” publications like The New York Times, The Food Network, Reddit, and people. Some hours afterward, it presents a sequence of products, along with pricing and suppliers. Some of the ads nowadays have purchase buttons, powered either by Shopify or by Perplexity’s unique payment processing company. If you click on one and order something, the shipping is free. The Perplexity app also has a visual search feature that allows you to search for similar items for sale online. ( Perplexity claims it isn’t making affiliate income from sales made through its platform. )
I looked up Perplexity Pro to find the “ideal holiday present for a close friend who likes to bake but already has everything.” The AI created a list of items that, with a few exceptions, most likely fell under the lowbrow-useless approval matrix. It included a$ 10 Tasty Tinies miniature baking set for children ( not applicable ), a$ 120 Bakken-Swiss stackable 8-piece bakeware set ( possibly useful ), and a$ 35 sweatshirt with the phrase” My Buns Are Gluten-Free” printed on it ( just no ). Tweaking the prompt to add words like “luxury” or” customized” did improve the outputs slightly, but not by much.
Using Perplexity’s shopping feature quickly started to feel not much different from browsing Amazon or Walmart’s websites—or maybe a product reviews site—just wrapped in a C-3PO, let-me-compute-for-you skin. Amazon’s Rufus AI also provides this kind of service right on Amazon’s website and in its mobile app, where there’s a bot that can answer questions, compare products, and help you mainline more junk from Amazon. When I asked Rufus for the same baking gift prompt, it immediately suggested that I buy her a KitchenAid Stand Mixer, which is upwards of$ 300. Rufus allegedly assumes you have Jeff Bezos money.
I then turned to the three other AI chatbots, none of which have standalone ecommerce features. However, one of the key selling points of tools like ChatGPT is that they are meant to help users brainstorm and generate ideas, which is exactly what I needed.
ChatGPT’s responses to my friend who loves baking were the most thoughtful and creative. It provided 15 different gift ideas, categorized by themes like Baking-Theme Gifts, Luxe Home Items, and Personalized. A handmade ceramic mixing bowl A premium tea or coffee sampler to go with baked goods? A recipe journal to keep track of baking adventures? This was the good stuff.
Technically speaking, that technically made Claude the least useful chatbot I tested for shopping. However, it also means that Anthropic has so far avoided entering the morally dubious territory of allowing its AI chatbots to remove human-written product reviews from the internet. Instead, Claude relies heavily on its existing data set to compare products. Perplexity, on the other hand, says that thanks to Buy with Pro, people” no longer have to scroll through countless product reviews”.
When I asked Perplexity what I should buy for my friend who is a musician/editor, it suggested a solar bike light set ( I also pointed out that he was a cyclist ). It wasn’t a bad idea, but not exactly a milestone-birthday worthy gift. I kept tweaking my prompt. What about a unique leather strap for a guitar? I jumped down the rabbit hole.
Perplexity’s goal in hyping up its shopping features, I was beginning to understand, wasn’t just to help me brainstorm fresh ideas or come up with supremely thoughtful gifts. Perplexity is taking our attention away from the web’s competing regions, getting a better understanding of how people like me use its platform, and feeding that information into its constantly evolving AI models. I remained in Perplexity’s app every time I needed to refine my searches because the initial results were frequently lacking, which meant I wasn’t on either Amazon or Google ( though I eventually ended up on both of those sites ). I am one of the millions of people who are supplying the information it needs to become, even though Perplexity Pro is not a fully developed e-commerce site nor is it “agentic” in any real way at this time.
When I turned to Google’s Gemini, I found the gifts it suggested for my 16-year-old niece weren’t bad, per se, just uncreative and, in one instance, confusing. It said I should buy her a” cat blanket for snuggling up with a good book,” but it wasn’t clear whether the blanket was meant for her or her cat. A Kindle was a good idea. However, I’m frightened of what she might text me if Gemini suggested using the SAT prep book ( probably” thx” and nothing else ) ). The app’s ideas for my editor/musician friend were equally uninspiring, among them” Vinyl records”, and” High-quality headphones”.
I was using the year-old version of Gemini, but earlier this month, Google started rolling out a newer version, Gemini 2.0, to developers and limited testers. The new AI model will” think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf”, the company says. This means taking action on the developer’s behalf and moving their coding workflows to the next level, but I’m eagerly awaited when it can go through my shopping list.
After ChatGPT, ChatGPT led me to an online spice shop where I purchased a few specialty baking ingredients for a friend who at this point had already developed the idea of winning The Great British Bake-Off. In the end, I chatted for so long with the AI bots that many of the presents I chose won’t arrive until after Christmas. Cash will be sent to my niece using a card. My search for a friend’s milestone birthday gift was inconclusive. I made the decision to move forward with the project until January, a month full of freshness and agentic resolve.
