It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Now that artificial intelligence is a household commodity, shoppers this holiday season will be the first to benefit from machine learning to help streamline gift-giving.
This time last year, the famous language learning model ChatGPT was only in its infancy and has since blossomed into a key tool to take much-needed pressure off users during what can be the most stressful time of the year.
It can prompt ideas for gift-giving, organize holiday finances, and even take a huge load off holiday correspondence. Even Santa Claus himself turned to AI for help with letter writing this December.
The best part is that programs like ChatGPT are designed to be approachable to anyone, regardless of the user’s tech-savvy. Of course, it always helps to know certain phrases or prompts that will get the most out of these digital elves — and The Post can show you how.
Here are ways that AI may take a huge burden off this holiday season.
Can AI help me find the right gift for anyone?
Every family has that one person who is impossible to shop for. No matter what the root cause, interactive programs like BingAI — whose parent company Microsoft owns OpenAI, ChatGPT’s maker — can save the day.
Bing’s interactive program is powered on ChatGPT, but goes a step further than the iconic app.
This version is directly connected to the Internet whereas standard ChatGPT is not. Users on Bing can have conversations with the AI as, in real-time, it suggests and links out specific products relevant to the person’s written prompts.
If you were buying for this reporter, a good sample prompt might be: “I need to Christmas shop for a man who loves the New York Islanders and ‘Sopranos,’ what are some good options?”
Something else to keep in mind is that even the same wording might generate slightly different responses.
Answers at first also might appear on the broader side, but it is worthwhile to continue to drill down specifics as you keep communicating with the program. Think of it like talking to a sales associate — don’t be afraid to mention details like if the person you’re shopping for already has a certain product or likes certain colors.
Offering feedback on answers and, if need be, starting a new conversation are also alternatives to get higher-quality results.
Meanwhile, AI Santa is also on deck to help parents understand their kids’ Christmas wishes. The website HandwryttenBySanta.com can put in a good word with the big man on behalf of your little ones, drafting custom messages that will then be produced and mailed out to children as instructed by parents.
Can AI help me organize and budget holiday shopping?
OpenAI’s pride and joy can be pivotal in organizing holiday budgeting.
Users can ask it prompts, such as “I need help putting together a balance sheet for Christmas shopping. Please provide a template for a person buying ten gifts for ten people.”
After doing so, ChatGPT will render a dropdown de-facto spreadsheet with fill-in spaces that users can modify and adjust. The code or plain text for said sheet is also able to be copied over into other programs. For crunching the numbers, users can use ChatGPT to check their math — or simply do it in the first place.
Like Tom Hanks as the conductor on “The Polar Express,” we’ve all got schedules to adhere to this holiday season. A program like ChatGPT can also often assist in time management — especially on Christmas Day.
A prompt such as “I need advice on creating a schedule for Christmas Day festivities beginning with opening gifts, preparing dinner, and fielding phone calls with loved ones” will fetch a laundry list of recommendations on the order of operations to begin, enjoy, and conclude the holiday.
ChatGPT recommends starting with a treat like pastries and hot cocoa before gathering around the tree to open gifts with loved ones.
The AI stresses capturing memories, writing thank you notes, and not losing track of time by mid-morning as that’s when cooking should likely commence. Later in the day comes phone calls with family and friends, food, and the expression of gratitude for a wonderful holiday.
Those with set plans can work the tech for much clearer and precise specifics that can include the days ahead of Christmas as well. It’s also perfectly fine to use GPT’s version 3.5 in place of the more current 4.
The latter has a restriction of 40 messages per three hours and these festive tasks are comparatively easy for the LLM.
Can AI help write and design Christmas cards?
While auto-writing technology might be frowned upon in academia, it’s certainly not getting a lump of coal from busy folks who need to write their Christmas letters this year.
A program such as Google’s NotebookLM — advertised as an AI tool “that helps you do your best thinking” — is the ideal helping hand to fire out personalized messages to loved ones at only a fraction of the effort.
NotebookLM is designed to redraft and summarize uploaded documents while also producing key points from the text it scans. Newer features also allow it to “offer tools to polish or refine your prose, or suggest related ideas from your sources based on what you’ve just written.”
In other words, a person can quickly write up a few bullet points they wish to include in their holiday messages and allow NotebookLM to do the heavy lifting — plus format it as well.
Users can also harness AI to make a unique image for their Christmas cards this year.
Generative AI programs like Bing AI, ChatGPT, and Google’s Bard are all designed for people to type in descriptive prompts that become rendered into images. A simple command like “A Christmas card with Santa and a tree” can yield results that have Hallmark trembling.
Still, feel free to have fun with this by having the computer make multiple versions with lots of tweaks.
If you’re looking to have the best family Christmas card in the bunch this year, Adobe Firefly can also modify existing images such as removing and replacing backgrounds with AI via worded prompt.
However, do be aware this often takes a great deal of back-and-forth plus specific wording with the machine to get something worthy of hanging in Santa’s workshop.
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