A very ChatGPT Christmas: Savvy Black Friday shoppers use AI to...
To be sure, generative AI like ChatGPT tends to require some fine-tuning. The AI’s answers aren’t fixed and it relies on probability to decide what answers to give. In some cases, it gives inaccurate or outdated information.
Getting the best deals on Black Friday used to require camping out for hours outside a Best Buy or Walmart and then stampeding into a store at the crack of dawn. Now, the savviest bargain hunters are turning to ChatGPT and other AI tools to get the job done.
Glimpse of the future
American shoppers are entering the holiday shopping season with a host of stressors, from inflation to fallout to a polarising presidential election to multiple ongoing wars. They’re not only being choosy about how to spend their money, but they’re looking for ways to ease the burdens of buying presents at reasonable prices.
That’s prompted some consumers to put their holiday shopping into the (digital) hands of the bots. Retailers like Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc are also leaning into AI to make shopping – and deal finding – easier.
"I do think this is a glimpse of the future,” John David Rainey, Walmart’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. He said the retailer is working on AI tools to improve product searches.
Frédéric Bourgeois-LeBlanc, a 32-year old from Montreal, said he used to go to Best Buy to snag the newest gadgets. But shopping has gotten too stressful and now requires too much research to find the best product at the best price, Bourgeois-LeBlanc, who works in public relations, said.
In lieu of scouring review sites and watching online tutorials, he said he’s turned to Weever.AI, a recently launched site that allows shoppers to ask questions and get back product recommendations. This Black Friday, Bourgeois-LeBlanc is pining for gaming headphones for his Xbox. He said AI makes it easier for "someone like me who is not used to really doing significant research.”
Unlocking deals
In many cases, shoppers say the best deals are no longer at brick-and-mortar stores or easily identified at retailer’s own websites. In the modern era of dynamic pricing and rapidly changing deals, shoppers have had to up their game.
Sana Akibu, a digital merchandising manager in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said she now starts every shopping search on ChatGPT.
Earlier this year, she saw a deal for a bracelet on Instagram but then wasn't able to find it again. "I swore I’d seen their deals before. So then I was like, you know what, let me ask ChatGPT just to see what happens,” Akibu said.
She input promo codes for the brand and the date to make sure it was a recent deal. "That unlocked a whole new shopping experience,” she said. She plans to at least use the bot for Black Friday holiday shopping for her family, and likely more.
