Can AI Chatbots Do Your Holiday Shopping? Here’s What We Learned [Video]

Can an AI-powered shopping assistant solve your holiday shopping conundrums? Maybe—if you go to them for thoughtful advice but don’t take their guidance as gospel.

AI recommendations are coming to your shopping cart. Retailers are giving their chatbots glow-ups as Americans use generative AI tools to create shopping lists, compare products and track prices, analysts said, guiding them through a complex online shopping landscape. E-commerce sites and apps are integrating—or creating their own versions of—tools like ChatGPT and Google’s (GOOG) Gemini, said Vivek Pandya, Adobe Insights’ lead insights analyst.

To get a sense of how they’re coming along, I asked some AI-backed assistants for seasonal suggestions for some of the toughest names on my list, getting responses that were both helpful and, occasionally, eyebrow-raising. One found a game for my young niece that looked fun. But it also said a tool capable of slicing metal would be good for my ailing grandmother in …