Just in time for Black Friday, ChatGPT introduced shopping research, which creates an in-depth guide in response to shopping questions. It can compare multiple items and ask clarifying questions, while building on its memory of you from past conversations. With 48% of consumers telling Adobe they plan to use AI for holiday shopping, the timing was perfect.
The newly enacted law intends to keep business from using AI to personalize (and possibly raise) prices for consumers based on what they think they might pay. This has pitted business groups, including the National Retail Federation, which tried to stop its passage, against consumer and privacy advocates who believe it protects consumers from price gouging and privacy violation.
Feeling that same holiday spirit, Perplexity just launched its own new shopping experience. It also learns your patterns based on past conversations so it can find items that match your aesthetic. A partnership with PayPal lets it go beyond research to provide checkout in the same user experience.
Meta has announced agreements with USA Today, People Inc., and other news publishers to pay for access to their content and link to their articles in its AI chatbot. It’s a sharp contrast to Perplexity, which the Chicago Tribune and New York Times are separately suing for allegedly scraping content and bypassing paywalls. Despite this deal, Meta apparently still opposes compensating publishers for news links in social media posts.