‘What should I buy Dad for Christmas?’: is retail ready for the AI shopping shift?

As shoppers ask ChatGPT for inspiration, brands scramble to ensure their products appeal to the bots calling the shots

Consumer test drive: can AI do your Xmas gift shopping for you?

Christmas shopping – some love it, to others it’s a chore and this year for the first time many of us will outsource the annual task of coming up with gift ideas to artificial intelligence.

While traditional internet search, social media – especially TikTok and Instagram – and simply wandering a local high street will still be the main routes to presents for most this year, about a quarter of people in the UK are already using AI to find the right products, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For brands appealing to younger people, the revolution is well under way: the rival advisory firm KPMG says as many as 30% of shoppers aged 25-34 are using AI to find products, compared with 1% of those aged over 65.