[BBC] Rachael Dunfell knew two things about her husband's 21-year-old cousin: that he liked specialised racing bikes and that he was interested in the Vikings.
But those pieces of information yielded few ideas for a suitable Christmas gift. So Rachael, 33, from Manchester, turned to artificial intelligence.
She inputted his age, his hobby and his interest into Copilot, the Microsoft-owned chatbot, which led her to the website of a niche retailer that sells Viking-themed metal bike parts.
"It's just something that I really would never have known existed," she said, "but it was perfect."
AI is shifting the holiday shopping experience.
People are increasingly turning to AI tools, from Copilot to OpenAI's ChatGPT to Google's Gemini, for help with gift ideas and to compare prices, with implications for bargain hunters and retailers alike.
John Harmon, a senior technology analyst at Coresight Research in New York, called this year the first holiday season shaped by AI-powered shopping.
While there is not a great deal of data on spending directly linked to AI, Salesforce has said AI is expected to drive 21% of all holiday orders globally, for a total of $263bn (£197bn) in sales.
More than half of US consumers say they would probably or definitely use AI to help with their shopping, a Coresight survey found.
In the UK and Ireland, a survey of 2,000 consumers by technology company CI&T, released this month, found that 61% use or have used AI tools while shopping - most often to find where to buy an item or locate the best deal.
But more than two-thirds of respondents could not think of an AI-powered retail experience that impressed them.
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