Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- AI tools like Amazon's Rufus assist in finding budget-friendly holiday gifts.
- Fifty-four percent of consumers plan to use AI for price comparison and tailored recommendations.
- AI is less helpful for last-minute shopping but useful for generating gift ideas.
SALT LAKE CITY — Roughly 1 in 4 Americans are still paying off debt from last holiday season, according to a recent WalletHub study. Can artificial intelligence actually help you with your holiday shopping by finding deals and gifts that are within your budget this year?
That's what KSL producer Sloan Schrage and I wanted to find out as we snooped around my kids' bedrooms to get a little inspiration on what they might want for Christmas. Then we turned to AI for a little help.
AI shopping assistants
"I do find that the AI tools, especially the Amazon ones, are really helpful when you're buying gifts," shopping expert Trae Bodge of TrueTrae.com told us. "If you have a set budget that you want to spend and you want to divide it up across your three kids, you can provide their ages, it will give you age-appropriate suggestions within our budget."
On this day, Bodge represents Amazon and its AI shopping assistant, Rufus, which is trained on the Amazon catalog. But Rufus is far from being the only tool available in the AI industry. And according to AI marketing platform Klaviyo, "54% of consumers plan to use AI this holiday season for comparing prices, searching for products, summarizing reviews and receiving tailored recommendations."
"I think people should try these different tools and see which ones appeal to them," said Bodge.
Let's begin with arguably the biggest name in AI: ChatGPT.
Generating gift ideas and budgets
We gave the bot a few prompts: Three kids, their ages, genders and interests. We set the parameters at, let's say, four presents each with a budget of around $250 for each kid.
To the AI bot's credit, it took its time. We watched for several seconds as it told us it was scouring sources for ideas and prices and whatnot.
Eventually, it gave us an impressive list with ideas, options and hyperlinks.
After playing around for a few, swapping things in or out, Sloan and I agree this is a pretty good tool for keeping Santa on budget. But what if Santa wants to come in under budget? That's where Amazon's Rufus really shines, said Bodge.
"You can say, 'Is there a comparable product from another brand or at a lower price?'" she said.
More than just finding deals
As I played around with Rufus, I found that Amazon was not always the cheapest on this day in October. But I've got lots of time, and prices fluctuate. So, I asked it to track prices for us. It said it would.
But Rufus seems confounded by this. First, it told us alerts were set up, but then in the same digital breath told us, no, it couldn't. We need to go to a specific product page and ask Rufus there to track its price. When we did that, Rufus asked us what price levels we wanted to be notified about. It then told us price alerts do not work on a traditional computer. We'd have to go mobile.
After some fussing around with the Amazon app, we were able to set up and also instruct Rufus to automatically buy if a price falls to a certain threshold.
The answer for holiday procrastinators?
This is all great if you have time to wait for prices to drop or for products to come in the mail. But, what if you're a procrastinator?
Back on ChatGPT, we asked for a list of stores where we could find my list of products available for pick up right now. At this, we found it less helpful.
It told us we could find a hat for my kid's favorite baseball team, the New York Mets, at my local DICK'S Sporting Goods. Nope. Not there.
Nor did Michael's have the gel nail starter kit the AI shopping assistant told me was there.
So, for last-minute shopping, we didn't find AI to be a lifesaver, exactly.
Still, if you're able to budget a little time, we found it can be very useful for generating gift ideas, digging up hyperlinks for specific gifts and for finding the best deals.
Many companies are leaning into artificial intelligence to keep prices low as they reduce their workforce. Last week, Amazon announced that it was laying off 14,000 employees, saying it was trying to stay "lean" in the age of generative AI.
