I Used ChatGPT to Shop for Gifts And It’s the Future

No matter how much experience you have with ChatGPT, it’s become an increasingly useful tool in all manners of situations. Everything from writing a killer essay or a resume to coding a new Chrome extension is possible with AI. Another use case that will quickly become hugely appreciated is using ChatGPT to help shop for gifts for the ones you love. It will even work for those you don’t love but need a gift for anyway. 

You may be the person who goes to ChatGPT first and tries to find the perfect gift or it may be a last resort after you’ve reached the end of Amazon. Regardless of the reason, you can utilize ChatGPT for gift ideas with no problem and it will offer a countless number of options. It’s also worth knowing you won’t be alone as over 31% of Americans indicated they would use ChatGPT in some way to help find holiday gifts this year. It’s all about safety in numbers! 

Without further ado, let’s dive right into how much easier your gift shopping can be with OpenAI and ChatGPT. 

Why You Should Utilize ChatGPT 

Before diving directly into gift shopping it’s important to understand why you should use ChatGPT. For most people, going to Google first is something of a default option. As ChatGPT is still relatively new, you may not be considering using ChatGPT even though it gives you access to a ton of information with minimal effort. 

Capable of searching the internet through April 2023, asking ChatGPT basic questions like “Please give me 10 gift ideas for my wife” can provide some easy results. The only alternative is the Google route, which may end up bouncing you from site to site until you find what you need. Instead, use ChatGPT and identify the right gift ideas faster and with less stress.

If you can provide ChatGPT with a lot of detail about what you are trying to find, it will quickly help identify the best gift ideas. This might mean your first prompt might be something along the lines of: “Act as if you are a personal shopper. My wife loves cooking, dancing, and traveling. Please provide 10 gift ideas that would be specific to her interests that I can find on Amazon.”

Detailed Prompts

Rest assured there is no penalty for longer prompts. On the contrary, the more detailed and specific you can get, the better the results. According to ChatGPT, there are five considerations you should include in your prompt to find the perfect gift. 

• Specifying interests will help you determine the right category for a gift. 
• Setting a budget will make sure ChatGPT isn’t recommending a car when your budget is for a wallet. 
• If a gift is for a specific occasion like Mother’s Day, it will help ChatGPT identify the right gift. 
• Any additional details you can provide are going to be helpful in making the right gift recommendations. 
• Last but not least, give ChatGPT a category of gift in order to help best determine what to find someone. 

With the understanding that the more specific you can be in your prompts, the better. Now, it’s time to find some gift ideas. 

Shopping for the Tech Lover 

For the most part, the tech lover in my life is me, so in this example, I’m really shopping for my own gift. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I really want this year. Given that, let’s see what ChatGPT can come up with if I use a detailed prompt.

Let’s start with a prompt that says something like “I am a technology lover. I already use an iPad, laptop, monitor, smartphone, and a PlayStation 5. I want to try and find a gift for myself that would be something I don’t already own but that I can use with the things I do own.” As you can see below, ChatGPT gave me a few different options including a drone, smart desk organizer, 3D printer, and an AR headset. 

Alternatively, I can rework this prompt a little to see if I can get a few different answers. “Please help me find the ultimate holiday gift by asking a series of questions to determine my interests and preferences around technology, iPads, laptops, computers, video games, and retro gaming. Then provide a list of at least 8 different gift suggestions under $100 based on the information you have gathered.” 

Now, after answering the questions posed by ChatGPT, it has curated a list of 8 different gift ideas for me. The good news is that I already own the SNES Classic because they are not cheap anymore! Thankfully, everything else on this list sounds right up my alley.

Shopping for Family Members

Now, let’s say I turn my attention to shopping for my brother-in-law. He’s someone who loves Tesla, baseball card collecting, and his dog. As you have seen above with ChatGPT, you can combine these interests into one prompt or separate each interest. However, let’s try something around Tesla as I know he’s a huge Tesla fan and loves his car more than anything.

Brother-in-Law

In this case, my prompt was simple: “My brother-in-law is a huge fan of his Tesla. He already has the car wrapped and has put on new wheels. I’m trying to find a unique gift idea for his car that he doesn’t already own.” 

As you can see by the responses, ChatGPT came up with 10 pretty solid gift ideas. In fact, the number one option, custom car mats might be a really great gift. When I say my BIL loves his Tesla, it’s not at all an exaggeration. 

Given this, I prompted ChatGPT to help me find more information on where I can shop for custom Tesla car mats. In this case, it’s provided me with some pretty obvious options, but it’s still a place to start. I’ll have to do the rest of the legwork on my own but ChatGPT certainly helped me come up with an option that is likely going to be his real gift this year. 

Mother-in-Law

What makes this all work well is that you can easily swap out the above prompts for any other products. You can try something like “My mother-in-law is a huge reader and loves to read on her iPad. She already has hundreds of books so I don’t need to buy any new books. I am trying to find a unique gift idea for her iPad that might help her read more comfortably.” 

With the above results, you can continue to prompt ChatGPT on one of the suggestions to try and find the right place to buy, or if it can provide some specific recommendations. I think an iPad Pillow Stand is a smart gift this year, so this might be something to ask ChatGPT for more information on. 

The Difficult Relative 

If you are someone like me, you have that one difficult relative in your life. You know the one, the one who always finds every opportunity to interject politics into every conversation. Well, for better or worse, I still need to find this person a gift every year.

The good news is that I can use ChatGPT to help me find something that isn’t too expensive and fits their personality just right. Actually, what I want to find is a gift that is something more than a generic gift card or a bottle of wine. 

With that, let’s try ChatGPT and see if they can help come up with some ideas. For our prompt, I will try something along the lines of “What are some gift ideas I can come up with for a relative that I am not close with and who complains about everything?” 

Okay, these options are not bad but I want something a little more fun. Let’s go with something that has a little more personality. In fact, I think a gag gift is probably the best idea. 

This time around, I’ll ask ChatGPT to give me something with a little more snark. As it turns out, this was the best idea and I think a few of these options like a “Complaints and Whining Notebook” or even a funny doormat are great options. They aren’t too impersonal and show a bit of creativity on my end. 

Google Versus ChatGPT

If you’ve made it this far in the article, there is a good chance you have already thought, why not just Google gift ideas? You can be certain with Google you will find an endless array of articles to help with this search. The challenge is that you can spend far too much time in an SEO wasteland. Alternatively, you can even go to Reddit and look at various subreddits like r/technology or r/Tesla to find something.

The caveat for both websites is the time and effort wasted. You can spend 30 minutes searching around Reddit or different Google results or you can spend 10-15 seconds with ChatGPT. None of the above queries with ChatGPT took me more than 30 seconds. To get the same exact results might take 20x as long using Google or Reddit. 

I recognize that not everyone is fully onboard with ChatGPT at this moment. The thing is, that’s okay as ChatGPT remains an imperfect system. I’ll happily be the first to admit some of its responses can be a bit delusional from time to time. 

However, gift shopping for Mother’s Day, the holidays, or birthdays are all so much easier now with ChatGPT. I’d even go as far as to say that Google really needs to watch out as ChatGPT might eat its lunch with gift ideas if it falls down on the job. 

The Bottom Line: ChatGPT Gift Shopping Is Fun

At the end of the day, I found gift shopping with ChatGPT to be a ton of fun. Not only is it fun, it’s also practical. You get the exact results you need without a whole lot of extra fluff that you might get from Google. The only real consideration here is that you need to refine your prompts to get the right result. 

Asking a general question like “What is a great gift idea for my dad” is going to get you the same type of ideas you will find on Google. Instead, ask “What is a great idea for my dad who loves tools and building things with his hands. He already has plenty of power tools but I’m looking for a unique idea that might help him build something new.” 

As long as you provide enough detail, ChatGPT and gift shopping can easily go hand in hand.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©FAMILY STOCK/Shutterstock.com.