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I Used AI to Do All of My Holiday Shopping

Chatbots aren't very good at picking gifts, but that didn't stop me from burning the planet in a quest for the perfect baking equipment.

I tried searching Perplexity Pro for the “ideal holiday gift for a close friend who likes to bake but already has everything.” The AI produced a list of items that mostly fell on what I would describe as the lowbrow-useless approval matrix, with occasional bits of brilliance. Perplexity is playing the long game, slowly siphoning our attention away from competing corners of the web, gaining a better understanding of how people like me are using its platform, and funneling that data into its ever-evolving AI models. ChatGPT eventually led me to an online spice store where I bought a few specialty baking ingredients for my friend, who at this point, I had built up in my mind to be a finalist in The Great British Bake-Off.

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