A Review of AI Gift Recommendations

Smart Shopping Lists: AI can help create smart shopping lists based on past purchases and preferences, making it easier to keep track of what gifts to buy for whom.

Voice-Assisted Shopping: AI-driven voice assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant can help consumers shop hands-free, making the process more convenient, especially for busy individuals.

Efficient Online Navigation: AI can optimize search results and website navigation, making it easier and quicker for shoppers to find what they’re looking for on online platforms.

Customer Support Bots: AI-powered chatbots can provide instant customer service, answering common queries and resolving simple issues, which speeds up the shopping process.

AI could certainly help with many aspects of Christmas shopping and preparation. While AI can’t automate the whole process (yet), today it can do quite a bit (even drive you to the store). The use of chatbots for customer support can reduce time spent waiting for answers to questions when Christmas shopping goes wrong, and it can help navigate the clutter of ads when searching for the right product online. It may help save money by identifying price drops and deals on the gift you’re looking for or help to guarantee the right style through AR experiences like virtual fitting rooms.

But when starting from scratch- finding just the right gift for a friend or loved one- how helpful is AI really?

When it comes to AI gift recommendations there is no shortage of tools available. Here are some of the ones we tried:

Santa GPT – created by “North Pole” (OpenAI): https://chat.openai.com/g/g-84tjozO5q-santa

Santa is a custom GPT created “North Pole” aka OpenAI (https://chat.openai.com/g/g-84tjozO5q-santa). In addition to gift recommendations, Santa provides sample prompts like “What is today’s advent surprise?” and “Tell me a heartwarming Christmas story.”  Santa even created a Christmas coloring page for kids.

I asked Santa to come up with some recommendations for stocking stuffers, here’s what it provided:

For your mother, how about a cozy pair of festive socks or a charming Christmas ornament? 🧦✨ For your father, consider a handy multi-tool or a gourmet coffee blend. ☕🔧 And for your sister, perhaps a cute enamel pin or a mini journal would be just the thing! 📔🌟 These small but thoughtful gifts are sure to bring joy and warmth to their hearts this holiday season! 🎄🎁🎉

Giftr CustomGPT by Divyanshu Sharma (https://chat.openai.com/g/g-KgAaILgPJ-giftr)

Giftr is a more tailored gift recommendation GPT. Giftr asked more questions to learn about the person you are shopping for and what their interests are. Giftr also provided links to find the gifts, but unfortunately the links didn’t work – this may have been a hallucination or at best a GPT skill still in the works. However, the gift suggestions were pretty good. Here’s what that looked like:

Perfect! For your friend who loves espresso martinis, enjoys music, and has a passion for traveling, here are some curated gift suggestions:

1. Espresso Martini Cocktail Kit: A stylish cocktail kit designed for making the perfect espresso martini at home. It can include premium coffee liqueur, vodka, and a recipe card. This kit is a wonderful way for your friend to enjoy their favorite drink anytime. Find it here.
2. High-Quality Portable Bluetooth Speaker: For a music lover who’s always on the go, a portable speaker with excellent sound quality and durability is ideal. It’s perfect for trips, whether it’s a beach day or a cozy evening in a hotel room. Check out this option.
3. Travel Journal: A beautifully crafted travel journal for documenting all the amazing trips and experiences. This gift is a thoughtful way to encourage your friend to capture memories from their adventures. Purchase it here.
4. Personalized Spotify Glass Art: A unique piece of glass art displaying a Spotify code for a song that means something special to both of you. It’s a modern and sentimental gift that combines their love of music with a personal touch. Customize it here.

Each of these gifts is thoughtfully chosen to align with your friend’s interests, making them feel appreciated and understood. The cocktail kit and Spotify glass art add a personal touch, while the speaker and journal enhance their music and travel experiences.

GiftGPT (https://gift-gpt.com/)

This is how GiftGPT describes itself: Our website utilizes a state-of-the-art AI algorithm to generate personalized gift recommendations that are tailored to the interests and preferences of the recipient. Our AI algorithm takes into account various factors such as age, gender and hobbies to provide you with unique and innovative gift ideas.

GiftGPT simplifies the prompting process with drop-down selections to choose parameters for your gifting search. Here’s what it recommended for a mother who enjoys bird watching:

Here’s an example of FPOV’s Senior Consultant, Matthew Bertram’s experience with a not-so-great AI gift recommendation generator.

In summary, AI gift recommendations aren’t perfect, and often you’d be better served not to take their exact advice. But like many use cases of GenAI in its current state, the benefit comes from starting the process or filling the white space. By providing a starting point, people can iterate on the ideas generated by AI to speed up the process and produce better outcomes complemented by the technology.

Try out some of the tools we listed for AI gift recommendations or the use cases for Christmas shopping help in general. Let us know your experiences, and if you find another brilliant use case for AI and Christmas shopping- don’t keep it to yourself!