AI can do more of your shopping this holiday season

"This holiday season, shoppers have more artificial intelligence to help with their gift lists. Target, Walmart, Ralph Lauren and other retailers this year unveiled chatbots that act as conversational stylists and shopping assistants. That means people who want to find matching pajamas for the family can ask a chatbot to sort through the options, or for a summary of customer reviews of an air fryer."

"At the same time, AI companies are getting into e-commerce. In September, OpenAI debuted an instant checkout feature in ChatGPT so people can buy items from stores such as Etsy without leaving the chat. This month, Google announced an AI assistant that can call local stores to check if an item is in stock, while Amazon rolled out an AI feature that tracks price drops and automatically buys an item if it falls within someone's budget."

"The goal is to provide shoppers with a tailored and convenient experience, retailers and tech companies said. Many of the new chatbots are "agents," which are programs that act autonomously and can respond to specific questions and context. They go beyond customer service chatbots that could handle only limited questions about returns or the status of an order. The latest chatbots can make holiday shopping more "personalized, efficient and cost-effective," said Lori Schafer, the CEO of Digital Wave Technology, which helps companies with AI tools."

Target, Walmart, Ralph Lauren and other retailers unveiled chatbots that act as conversational stylists and shopping assistants, enabling shoppers to request matching family pajamas or summaries of customer reviews. OpenAI added an instant checkout feature in ChatGPT for purchases from stores such as Etsy without leaving the chat. Google introduced an AI assistant that can call local stores to check inventory, and Amazon released a feature that tracks price drops and automatically purchases items within a shopper's budget. Many new chatbots function as autonomous agents that respond to specific context and questions and go beyond traditional customer-service bots. These tools aim to make shopping more personalized, efficient, and to reduce decision fatigue.

Read at Miami Herald