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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Sarah Butler

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

An illustration of a shopping trolley with AI chip and marketing icons
With a quarter of people in the UK using AI to find products, marketers must not only appeal to shoppers directly but to AI bots and their opaque decision-making process. Photograph: Marco Marca/Getty Images

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.

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