‘What to buy Dad for Christmas’: is retail ready for the AI shopping shift?

As shoppers ask ChatGPT for inspiration, brands scramble to ensure their products appeal to the bots calling the shots

• Consumer test drive: can AI do your Xmas gift shopping for you?

Christmas shopping - some love it, to others it's a chore, and this year for the first time many of us will outsource the annual task of coming up with gift ideas to artificial intelligence.

While traditional internet search, social media - especially TikTok and Instagram - and simply wandering a local high street will still be the main routes to presents for most this year, about a quarter of people in the UK are already using AI to find the right products, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.