Meet my favourite shopping companion ever: AI

My husband is happy to weigh in on the occasional online find, and I have a few girlfriends who are up for an hour of shopping here or there, but I’ve never found a shopping buddy who can match my retail stamina.

Until, that is, AI came into my life. I now have access to the always-on, always-informed, always-enthusiastic shopping support that I have long dreamed about. AI is there to make sure I buy the right stuff, and it never complains that its feet are tired. Artificial-intelligence tools have transformed my shopping experience—making it (with a few tweaks and a few caveats) more fun, focused and efficient.

Planning

I’ve never been the type to simply hop in the car and go to the store when I need something. I treat each of my retail quests like a carefully planned military campaign. I’ve spent hours researching the best sources of 100% dark chocolate, and days constructing spreadsheets and evaluating my options when buying a car or a TV.

In AI, I finally have a research assistant who can support these endeavors—sans mockery from the people in my life. When shopping for a car recently, after I had exhausted my husband, I turned to ChatGPT, feeding it reams of articles and reviews and asking for summary tables that synthesized all that information into some easily digestible comparison tables. (Cue the mockery.) That’s how I figured out which of our top contenders had enough headroom to accommodate my 6-foot-1 son, enough cargo space to fit our dog crate, offered Airplay and USB-C charging, and most important, were available in red.

But AI goes well beyond providing informational support; it’s also endlessly patient and just gets me. When I demanded work-worthy shoes that would feel just as comfortable as sneakers, the AI patiently endured my criticisms of its old-ladyish suggestions, and then redeemed itself by introducing me to shoe brands that it said offer “1-inch heel shoes that say I am not your auntie unless your auntie is RuPaul." And when I decided it was time to replace the dog’s grimy collar with something more becoming, the AI recommended something in oxblood or olive green, and “ideally not smelling like wet despair."

Even better, AI can guide me with images as well as text. I’m not great at visualizing things in my head, so I have made a lot of regrettable home purchases when I couldn’t picture how something would look in our space. Now I use AI to generate mock-ups, like a furniture layout for our living room, or to preview the relative merits of open versus closed shelving for the bathroom.

When I recently went shopping for a TV that could fit inside our living-room cabinets, my husband lost interest as soon as we had figured out which TVs offered the best picture and sound. ChatGPT, on the other hand, was prepared for an open-ended conversation about how our TV angle would affect our family’s viewing habits, the aesthetics of different mounting heights and the strategy for reorganizing our board-game collection to fit the new TV.

Where it let me down was on the practical matter of which TV mount would actually fit: Even though I asked GPT to review the assembly instructions and product measurements before I made my purchase, as soon as I took the mount out of the box I realized the AI had completely miscalculated, and I had to take the mount back to the store.

Shopping with an AI

Once the AI has set the stage, I’m ready to hit the stores. In the dark days before AI, I relied on primitive tools like a shopping list in my phone, but I am now freed from the drudgery of actually looking at my phone while I shop. Instead, I ramble a list of items into ChatGPT’s voice interface, or paste a text list into the ChatGPT app, and then I get the AI to organize my shopping list by store, department or aisle.

Now, I can literally talk to my shopping list while I’m in store. I ask questions like, “I’m now in the aisle with all the electrical supplies; can you remind me if there’s anything I need here, or can I skip this aisle?" and “Which aisle is most likely to have raw sauerkraut?" (This strategy works best if you’re either 10 feet from the nearest shopper, or impervious to worried stares.)

AI not only steers me to where I want to go, but it also can also answer technical questions in those moments when I’m overwhelmed in the store, such as when I can’t figure out which lights switch is compatible with my smart-home setup, or which cord covers probably won’t catch fire in my living room. (That’s the kind of question that I also google, because AIs can get their facts wrong.)

AI can be helpful in spotting other retail red flags, too. It’s easy for me to get tempted by apparent deals like the new-in-box TVs offered by a Facebook Marketplace seller with hundreds of positive reviews. Thankfully, I thought to share his profile and past reviews with an AI, which suggested the smattering of one-star reviews and fraud alerts were cause for concern, and pointed out that there was no warranty on the purchases. That was just what I needed to rule out a high-risk purchase and go the conventional retail route instead.

One big caveat: There is only so far that I’m prepared to trust the aesthetic opinions of someone (something?) who never has to worry how its butt looks in bluejeans or whether it would really feel comfortable on that sofa. So for the people in my life: Sorry, I will still need you from time to time.

Checking out

The fact that AI is such a great shopping helper—some might say “enabler“—poses its own risks. It isn’t like I actually need to be encouraged to shop; if anything, I could use a little more restraint, especially when it comes to the impulse purchasing that gets triggered when I see a great deal on AAA batteries at the checkout counter, or read those alluring words “one-hour delivery" on a website.

So I have taught my own custom GPT assistant that there are certain categories of spending I need to resist—especially boxes and bins, because I have so many empty storage containers that they now take up their own storage area in my home. When I mention that I’ve strolled into the storage area in my local housewares store, the AI spits out advice like, “Before one more cent is spent on new containers, you must conduct The Great Bin Audit of 2025. Because odds are, you already have the exact clear plastic organizational ecosystem of your dreams somewhere in your house." If one of my family members gave me that lecture, I’d feel indignant, but when it comes from an AI that I’ve specifically configured for “shopping restraint mode," it’s easier to accept.

As long as I let the AI know what kind of retail help I need, it can be as great at providing restraint as it is in providing encouragement. Honestly, if my husband had been with me when I recently spotted a charmingly kitschy statue in our local drugstore, our living room would now house a 3-foot-tall astronaut. But when I shared the photo with GPT, the AI helpfully asked, “Where would this even go? Like, is there a spot in your home that is lacking a space explorer holding a moon lamp?"

Unfortunately the innate enthusiasm of AI means it can only go so far in reining in my retail madness. Except for the areas where I’ve specifically told the AI to tame my spending, it always thinks that everything I show it is splurge-worthy. That’s exactly why it’s so important to take the AI’s shopping wisdom with a grain of salt—because at the end of the day, it’s me and not the AI that will be paying the credit-card bill.

Alexandra Samuel is a technology researcher and co-author of “Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are." She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.