Whether you're ready or not, it's the time of year to start looking at holiday shopping deals. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner, and there are lots of flash sales on websites like Amazon.
Now, companies like Google are using artificial intelligence to enhance online shopping for consumers in Houston and beyond. Google's "Buy for Me" feature uses AI to monitor those deals to determine the best time to make a purchase. If you allow it to, Google will even make the purchase for you.
"So, you’re just setting the price, and AI does all that deal hunting for you," said Jala Tucker, a trends expert at Google. "You don’t really have to do the flash sales, like checking every hour to see when the deal is. AI really helps you kind of speed up that process."
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The obvious benefit to shoppers is saving money in a hassle-free way. AI experts note that companies that offer free services like these also use consumer data for their benefit.
"If the service is free, you are the product, right?" said César Uribe, an AI researcher at Rice University in Houston. "So, every time we’re doing that, that means these companies that capture these data are going to want to be profitable, because at the end of the day, they’re companies, right? They’re not beneficiaries, they’re commercial. They have a commercial activity, so they want to monetize this data. And this is where things might get complicated."
Uribe argued the United States could go further in terms of regulating artificial intelligence in a way that benefits and protects consumers. On the research side, he also says more work can be done in eliminating biases from AI as well as increasing transparency in AI's decision-making.
But he also noted that AI is already being used to a certain degree. For example, when you make a purchase online, distributers will recommend additional products, which to an extent could be considered artificial intelligence, Uribe said.
Tucker with Google also noted the end result of AI-enhanced shopping is not too dissimilar from other forms of online shopping.
"You have all the same safety checks that come with regular online shopping," she said. "You can just get to that retailer faster and find what you’re looking for easier, chatting with Gemini and AI, getting ideas and direct links, but you still have your typical safety checks that you would usually do if you were shopping normally. It’s just a little bit faster."
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