How to use AI as a shopping assistant

The most time-consuming part of shopping for many is the research process: poring through review sites and plucking out the item that’s right for you, whether it’s coffee equipment or a hotel room that is both convenient and affordable. I’ll cover what A.I. can do to help make informed purchasing decisions quickly and efficiently. For this exercise, I’ll focus on using chatbots, including Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to do product research. I’ll also explore how to use ChatGPT plug-ins, a more recent development, for creating grocery lists and planning travel.

Let’s say you like to make your coffee in a French press, and you’re looking to buy a grinder that costs no more than $200. The typical research process is to do a web search and read a bunch of reviews.

A.I. chatbots can streamline this process. Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard, which are hooked up to search engines by default, are the best equipped for getting up-to-date product recommendations.

As is always the case, the right prompt will get the best results. For this example, you would type something like: “Act as a shopping assistant. I am looking for a coffee bean grinder for French press that is well reviewed. It should cost no more than $200.” In response, Bing and Bard will list examples of grinders that fit the criteria.

You can also ask the chatbots tougher questions, like which household appliances will be long lasting. You could type something like, “Act as a shopping assistant. I am looking for a refrigerator. Which brands have the highest reliability rating and what are some well reviewed refrigerators from them?”

The bots will tell you which appliances have the highest reliability ratings from publications like Consumer Reports and The Times’s own Wirecutter.

Whenever you’re using a chatbot, it’s a good idea to check the results for accuracy. But doing a web search to double check the bots’ recommendations is a whole lot faster than manually searching from scratch.

Now let’s talk about the future. OpenAI is developing a plug-in platform, which is essentially a third-party app store that allows you to add capabilities to ChatGPT. Currently only subscribers who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus can use plug-ins, including the ones for web browsing and shopping. To use plug-ins if you’re a paying subscriber, go to the ChatGPT settings menu, click “beta features,” and turn on “plugins.” Then, in the ChatGPT app or website, go to the GPT-4 tab and click “plugins.” Then click on the downward arrow and select the plugin store. This is where you can search for apps. Let’s start with one for the grocery delivery app, Instacart. Try typing a prompt like, “I am making pasta Bolognese. What’s a good recipe and what are the ingredients?” The chatbot will list the ingredients that go into the dish and offer to generate a shopping list.

Another interesting way to use the plug-in is to shop around dietary restrictions. For example, “I am making dinner for a pescatarian. Give me a suggestion and the ingredients.” The bot will suggest a meal — in my case, lemon garlic butter shrimp — and list the ingredients. Clicking on the shopping list will bring you to Instacart, where you can automatically load all the items into your cart and choose a grocery store to purchase them from.