Major retail chains and tech companies are offering new artificial intelligence tools in time for the Christmas shopping season, hoping to give consumers an easier gift-buying experience and themselves a bigger share of online spending.
The latest AI tools provide personalized product recommendations, track prices and can even place some orders.
Here are three ways the technology could influence holiday shopping in 2025.
Search tools
Some tools promise to give shoppers faster and more detailed results than a web browser.
ChatGPT now has a shopping research feature that provides personalized buyers’ guides. The information comes from product pages, reviews, prices and a user’s previous interactions with the chatbot.
Amazon rolled out its Rufus shopping assistant last year, which also uses browsing, purchase history, and reviews to personalize recommendations.
Google’s AI Mode can now perform detailed searches for specific items, for example: “a casual sweater to wear with jeans in New York in January.” It can also produce charts with comparisons of prices, features, reviews and other factors.
Price trackers
Shoppers also have new tools for tracking online prices.
Amazon launched a 90-day pricing history tracker this month for virtually everything it sells. Shoppers can now receive notifications when prices on specific items fall within their budgets.
Google has launched an advanced price tracker that lets users refine their requests with details like a garment’s size and color. Microsoft’s Copilot also launched a price tracker this year.
New ways to buy
OpenAI has a new checkout feature that lets users buy products suggested by ChatGPT without leaving the app. Users can order merchandise from Etsy sellers and from some brands that use Shopify.
Amazon shoppers can use Rufus to search for products on the Amazon app, but if Amazon doesn’t carry the item, a “Shop Direct” button will transfer users to an online store that does.
Google’s web browser now has an automated AI agent that can be instructed to phone local businesses to ask if a product is in stock. Google said it’s applying the feature initially to specific product categories: toys, health and beauty, and electronics.
