ChatGPT's new shopping tool is the AI personal shopper I've always wanted - but for now, humans are still better at finding Black Friday deals

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Can you trust an AI personal shopper?

ChatGPT Shopping Research
(Image credit: OpenAI)

It’s the end of November, and that means it’s time to scour the internet for the best Black Friday deals.

Luckily, if you’re reading this, you probably know TechRadar is one of the best places online to find a discount, especially considering we have journalists all over the world looking for the best ways to save you money.

Hey ChatGPT, find me the best AirPods deals

ChatGPT shopping research Airpods

(Image credit: Future)

Yesterday, I wrote about the best AirPods Black Friday deals currently available, so I had AirPods Pro 2 discounts on my mind this morning when I went to test out ChatGPT shopping research.

I decided to enable shopping research (simply click the + button in ChatGPT to select it) and ask a fairly vague, yet easily solvable shopping prompt: “AirPods Black Friday deals.”

ChatGPT started to think, and then asked me a few questions based on my needs, such as what my price range was and which models I was interested in. Then, the AI showed me multiple products in a card-style UI where I could say if I was interested, and if not, why I wasn’t.

Within two minutes, ChatGPT's shopping research provided me with a full shopping guide for AirPods and included the two main discounted deals in the UK at the time of writing. It was pretty impressive, I can’t lie. But I needed to test out the shopping feature further to get a good understanding of its capabilities.

How about something more vague

ChatGPT shopping research air fryers

(Image credit: Future)

Often, when you’re looking for a Black Friday deal, you look for guidance on what the best product and the best discount are. So to test this, I decided to ask ChatGPT shopping research to “Find me a good Black Friday deal on an air fryer for the kitchen.”

Could ChatGPT compete with the excellent information I could find in TechRadar’s best Black Friday air fryer deals? I decided to point ChatGPT in the direction of a dual-chamber air fryer, preferably made by Ninja, because I could see that there were plenty of deals on these already available in the sales.

This time, ChatGPT shopping research took seven minutes to recommend me a product, and while it found one of the best deals you can find at the moment in the UK, it only gave me two options despite there being loads to choose from on the human-curated TechRadar article.

The experience using ChatGPT shopping research was pretty pleasant; in fact, I quite enjoyed leaving AI to its own devices while I went about my workday. That said, I can’t properly recommend this new AI tool yet, and it’s for the exact same reason that I don’t think anyone can truly complete tasks using the other research offerings on the market. I'll explain why next.

99% isn’t good enough

ChatGPT Shopping Research

(Image credit: OpenAI)

When you look at TechRadar for a deal this Black Friday, you can be sure that the price has been verified and that the author has done their due diligence to be certain that you won’t find a better price.

With ChatGPT research tools, whether that’s this particular shopping one or deep research, you can never be 100% certain that it isn’t hallucinating in some form along its thought process. And, considering it can make things up, misunderstand situations, and maybe even overlook retailers, you can never know if the deal it’s pointing you towards is actually the best.

ChatGPT shopping research is really well done if you need extra help with making a purchasing decision, but it doesn’t replace the hours and hours spent by humans to update deals posts in real time to ensure you can save the most money possible, or even if a discount isn’t involved, point you towards making a purchase you won’t regret.

After testing out ChatGPT shopping research, I’ve found a newfound appreciation for the work my colleagues and I put in during seasonal sales like Black Friday. Whether that’s researching products to ensure they offer the best bang for buck, or scouring the web to check price history, journalists all around the world, not just on this site, work hard over the holiday period so you don’t have to.

I’ll continue to use shopping research for information and quick product comparisons, but it still requires human research, whether that’s done independently or by using a website with professionals.

At the end of the day, AI is just another resource helping you to save that little bit of cash at this time of the year, and using it alongside other platforms definitely won’t hurt. Just don’t trust ChatGPT shopping research as gospel, or you might end up losing cash, rather than saving it.

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John-Anthony Disotto
John-Anthony Disotto
Senior Writer AI

John-Anthony Disotto is TechRadar's Senior Writer, AI, bringing you the latest news on, and comprehensive coverage of, tech's biggest buzzword. An expert on all things Apple, he was previously iMore's How To Editor, and has a monthly column in MacFormat. John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade, and is an award-winning journalist with years of experience in editorial.

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