I used AI to do all my holiday shopping

In their initial response, ChatGPT did not provide any links to the products. But it readily provided them when I asked, and none of them even though I clicked on each one hallucination. On the other hand, Claude apologized and said that he “can’t actually link directly to websites or products.” Anthropic hasn’t yet released a web search feature for Claude, but the company says it’s working on it.

This technically made Claude the least useful chatbot I tested for shopping. But it also means that Anthropic has so far avoided venturing into the ethically murky territory of allowing its AI chatbots to pull human-written product reviews off the web. Instead, Claude bases product comparisons on an existing data set. Confusion, on the other hand, says that with Pro and Buy, people “no longer have to scroll through countless product reviews.”

When I asked Perplexity what I should get for my editor-musician friend, he recommended a solar bike light kit (I also mentioned that he’s a cyclist). It was a good idea, but not exactly a birthday present. I kept changing my offer. How about a custom leather guitar strap? I went down the rabbit hole.

Confusion’s purpose in enhancing shopping habits, I began to realize, wasn’t just to help me brainstorm fresh ideas or come up with extremely thoughtful gifts. Confusion is playing the long game, slowly shifting our attention away from competing corners of the web, better understanding how people like me use its platform, and feeding that data into ever-evolving AI models. Every time I had to refine my searches because the initial results were often missing, I was stuck in Perplexity, which meant I wasn’t on Amazon, nor was I on Google, although I ended up on both of those sites. Perplexity Pro isn’t a full-fledged e-commerce site, and still isn’t an “agent” in any real sense, but I’m one of the millions of people who provide the information they need to become these things.

When I Googled Gemini, I found that the gifts it suggested for my 16-year-old niece weren’t bad per se, just uncreative and somewhat confusing. It said I should buy him a “cat blanket to snuggle up with a good book”; it was not known if the blanket was for her or her cat. Kindle was a good idea. But I am afraid of what he will do. If I send her the SAT prep book Gemini suggests, write me (probably just a “thank you” and nothing else). “vinyl records” and “high quality headphones”.

I was using the old one Twins versionbut earlier this month, Google began rolling out a newer version of Gemini 2.0 to developers and limited testers. New AI model will ‘think steps ahead and take action on your behalf’ he says. For now, it means taking action on behalf of developers – taking the next step in their coding workflows – but I’m looking forward to the day it goes on my shopping list.

Finally, ChatGPT led me to an online spice store where I bought some special baking ingredients for my friend, who I had in mind to be a finalist at the time. British cooking. In the end, I chatted with the AI ​​bots for so long that most of the gifts I chose wouldn’t arrive until after Christmas. My brother will get cash by card. My search for a birthday present for a friend was fruitless. Until January, a month full of innovation and agent determination, I decided to complete the task.