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It seemed promising when Amazon's shopping chatbot suggested gifts of "page-turner fiction" for a buddy who enjoys beach travel and reading.
But instead of the fun, breezy novels I expected, the top artificial intelligence recommendations were titled something like "Page-turner" or "How to Write a Page Turner." Oops.
I tried two of Amazon's AI helpers - the Rufus chatbot and AI-powered product research guides released in October - for my holiday shopping dilemmas and questions. I hoped for improvements on a test version of Rufus that I found mostly useless early this year.
This time, Amazon's shopping AI features weren't useless but they mostly weren't useful, either. And the AI occasionally botched it so badly, as with the overly literal page turners, that I was skeptical of anything it spit out.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
In a statement, Amazon said that "while there remains a lot of opportunity to innovate with generative AI to further improve the shopping experience, customers are responding very positively to our AI shopping tools."
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he wants the company's AI assistant to be better than a store clerk who listens to your needs, answers your questions and helps you pick the perfect running shoes or party dress. In my experience, Amazon's AI falls short of that goal.
• AI vs. human gift ideas
When I asked Rufus for help with a stocking stuffer, it helpfully nudged for the recipient's favorite activities and hobbies. (You can summon Rufus from the lower right corner of Amazon's app.)
When I said they're into beach travel, cooking Korean food, reading fiction and puzzles, Rufus suggested product categories that were a good start as inspiration: beach tote bags, Korean cooking utensils, the "page-turner fiction" and puzzle books.
But once past the first step, the shortcomings of Amazon and its AI were glaring.
I chose the Korean utensils category and was dumped into the typical results of an Amazon search: a sea of trash-or-treasure listings for Korean barbecue tongs, cooking spoons, chopsticks and more.
Maybe that's fine. Rufus steered me to general ideas, and then I was on my own to sift the vast virtual shelves. But that doesn't match Jassy's AI goal of topping an experienced store clerk.
For comparison, I asked Post recipes editor Becky Krystal for gift ideas for someone with modest Korean cooking experience.
She and I quickly thought of high-quality versions of common ingredients such as Korean chile flakes, hot pepper paste or kimchi; a nice bottle of Korean rice wine; or a gift certificate to a local Asian grocery store.
It's subjective, but I think Becky handily beat the AI. Amazon doesn't sell most of the items that we came up with. That shows a shortcoming of Amazon-specific shopping helpers for gift ideas.
Amazon didn't reply to most questions about my AI experiences.
• What are these 'travel' headphones?
With most everything else I threw at Amazon's AI helpers, the results were a similar mix of kind of useful, mildly disappointing and flat-out wrong.
In Amazon's AI shopping guide for headphones, it was handy to see models sorted by their specialization, including fitness, video games and travel. Once I scratched below the surface, though, it wasn't great.
When I tapped the "sport" headphones from the AI guide, the "for you" models seemed chosen at random. (I also wondered why Amazon used the British spelling "sport" instead of "sports.")
The AI-aided lists didn't seem much more useful than the box you can already check to narrow an Amazon headphones search by "fitness," wireless and other categories. Amazon said the AI shopping guides let you browse a refined selection of products.
In "travel" headphones, the top AI results weren't models with noise cancellation features for long flights. Instead, they were bizarre eye masks and headbands that piped audio.
With factual headphone questions, Rufus was hit-or-miss.
When prompted for a price history, Rufus showed me that a model of headphones was at the lowest price highlighted on Amazon for the past month. That's useful! (Shopping websites like CamelCamelCamel have more detailed price histories.)
Then I asked Rufus which headphone models have a USB-C connection, which means they'll plug into most newer iPhones and Android phones. One of the three replies was wrong; the manufacturer confirmed that.
If you're still checking off items on your holiday shopping list, I'd suggest steering clear of Amazon's AI. Even Amazon's non-AI sections, like those for last-minute or white elephant party gifts, might be better. A knowledgeable human is definitely superior.
Imperfect AI may not be the root of the problem.
For years, Amazon has tried to tackle a common frustration: Buying is a breeze if you know what you want, but maddening if you're unsure and have to sift through 30,000 pairs of jeans. That's a challenge of e-commerce sites that sell nearly everything, and it's tempting to use technology as a substitute for taste or understanding how humans make shopping decisions.
Everything Amazon has tried to improve research and browsing - paid product placements, influencer videos and now AI - might make the problem worse.
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