I know. You're a good person. You're just a terrible gift giver. Or maybe they're a terrible gift receiver because they already own, hate or return everything. Plus you hate AI. Don't worry. It's all going to work out.
You have to figure out what gift to get because only once you do that will your panic attacks stop and only pop up when you really need them: when you're in actual danger or realize you're out of migraine medication.
It's very common; you just don't know what to buy & can't figure it out.
You don't even care anymore. You're ready to buy anything.
You know your niece enjoys basketball, slime and Tik Tok but you can't turn that knowledge into a gift idea. You might just get her a cocktail shaker and call it a day.
If you're reading this however - you want to do better. You want to give a good gift. A gift that will be passed around, admired and revered for it's perfect match for the recipient.
And it's easy.
In my own panicked trying to come up with gift ideas state the other night I thought - I wonder if the devilish, job-eating robot would know. And it did.
Enter ChatGPT.
I went to the artificial intelligence site, logged in and gave it a shot.
Having worked with it before I know how to best use ChatGPT. You have to talk to it like it's a drunk bowling pin with a very high IQ.
The more specific you are with your ChatGPT requests the better the results will be. That's always the case, not just with gift buying tips. Sometimes though, ChatGPT gloms onto one of your words and only pays attention to it.
So you may need to fool around a little with the prompt.
I came up with a general formula that will work to give you ideas for presents no matter the recipient's age, relationship to you or where they live.
Would you like to save this stuff?
We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.
You *will* need to know a bit about your gift recipient though.
The Recipient Info
- Name
- Gender
- Age
- Where they live
- Occupation
- Relationship to you
- Occassion
- Interests/hobbies
- Books they like
- Movies they like
- TV shows they like
- General tastes in home goods or clothing (antique, modern, colourful, expensive, eco-friendly, fair trade)
- Brands they like or do not like
Go to ChatGPT and login.
Copy and paste the below into the "message ChatGPT..." area. Fill in your own information before hitting enter.
Give me several Christmas gift ideas for my (insert recipient's relationship to you), (insert their name), who is (age) years old & lives in (city they live in). (He/she/they) is a (enter their occupation here). Their hobbies are (insert any interests or hobbies here - be specific). I have a budget of (add your budget). Include brands and specific items.
For example, your finished prompt would look like this:
Give me several Christmas gift ideas for my nephew, Fonzie, who is 20 years old & lives in a garage apartment in Barrie, Ontario. He is a mechanic. His hobbies and interests include motorcycles, fixing things, leather jackets, jeans, and sharks. He likes black and white clothing, white tee shirts and is proud of his of Italian heritage. I have a budget of $150. Include brands, specific items.
Go ahead and copy and paste my Fonz prompt into the robot and see what it comes up with.
After it generates your gift ideas and you've looked through them enter: Include some local items as well to the message spot. ( It's like a conversation so you don't need to re-tell it the other information. )
You'll see the difference between the two suggestions.
Now Try it for Yourself
Using my formula, fill in the blanks with your own information and give it a shot.
The more information you add about the recipient the better the suggestions will be. And the more specific you are with your request the better as well.
- Asking for the items to be local, or eco-friendly for example.
- Giving colour preferences.
- Asking to personalize the items will get you a range of personalized gift ideas.
- Adding favourite, books, authors and movies will help with gifts to read and watch.
- If the recipient is blind, a goth, hard of hearing, loves expensive things, or hand crafted items add that too. ChatGPT will take everything into consideration.
The first time I tried it was for a family member the other night. On my second prompt it came up with a fantastic idea, that even though it was fairly obvious, I never would have thought of. It will be the gift of the season for the recipient.
I can't tell you what it is or who it's for because my entire family reads my website hoping I will say something that can be used as the basis for a lawsuit later in life.
Is it the perfect solution to gift giving. I mean, it's not Santa, but Santa gave me a doll once for Christmas so he clearly can't be trusted all the time either.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Tina
I was skeptical, but this is amazing (and more than a little addicting!).
Karen
Funny, eh?! I wouldn't use it for everyone, but if you'r estuck it really is helpful. ~ karen!
Jennie Lou
You never told us what AI told you to get Fonzie for Christmas . . . I was interested to see if AI is worth anything at all!
Karen
Hi Jennie. You can just copy the text I wrote and paste it into ChatGTP. That's why I wrote it all out, so you can copy it, paste it and see what the results are like. Then you do the same, but inserting information about the person you want to buy for. ~ karen!
George
Sorry, I love your writing and articles but I won't take part in training Skynet.
Kat - the other 1
Hmm, some comments are disappearing into the ether and never show up. ?
Vikki
Sir Philip is such a distinguished gentleman!
My husband always returns everything! I finally figured out it is his hobby, so now I just get him things and he has a good time finding fault with them and going through the process of returning everything. Well it keeps him out of the bars.
Merry Christmas, all!
Randy P
And future generations will note that this is how the human race led Skynet to become self-aware and have their robot overlords hunt us all down. Hmmmm............... Now that I've reread that sentence I'm not sure if it is an attempt at mild sci-fi humour or prophecy.
Randy P
I do note that I clicked on an ad link here for Snake River Farms, marvelous meat products sadly beyond my budget. Guess what ads are now appearing everywhere I go on the interwebs. For a long time now companies have been able to track one's interests and supply marketing in kind. I tells ya - "It begins!" lol
Maria
No. Not doing that. Sorry. They will get a gift card and be grateful for it.
Huguette Lacoste
psst... it's ChatGPT
Karen
LOL. ALL the time. I do that all the time with ChatGPT. (clearly) ~ karen!
Terry
Great template; just used for someone! And what a photo of Phillip!😍😍😍
Karen
Excellent. I'm glad it worked! And yeah, he's pretty handsome. ~ karen
Peggy MacMillan
Thanks Karen. I will give it a try.
Would you please tell me where you got your blue satin ribbon for the bows on your Christmas tree and tell me how wide it is. 🙏
Karen
I used .4" red ribbon like this and 7/8th blue ribbon like this. ~ karen!
Lynn
This was amazing! I didn’t use my real name nor did I use real name of person I was shopping for. I blabbed on about myself to see what would come up. It was like therapy ;)
The results were as you said Karen, obvious but with a thoughtful or unique take on suggestions.
I think I’ll go out and buy, enroll and subscribe to the gift ideas for myself 🥴
Ok, then I will see what it suggests for my husband who I will call Emilio 🫢
Emie
I haven't ventured into the world of AI as of yet. But, this is a promising way to try it out. I gave it a try and it works really well. Thanks for the suggestion.
MsPeppercorn
Almost certainly you have in the form of Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, medical diagnosis, fraud detection, facial recognition to open your phone or tablet. It’s all very frightening and going to get worse if you value privacy and freedom..
Karen
It seems scary/creepy/weird but really it's just a more accurate (fact based) version of Google. ~ karen!
Kate
I use Chat gpt often but never thought of using it for gift ideas, brilliant!
Sara
As usual, you are BRILLIANT... Thank you!
Karen
Thanks Sara, hope it helps! ~ karen
Rachel Rios
This was insanely helpful. In my haste to implement robotic gift generation I scrolled right past Phillip!
Karen
Of course you did! He's just a whisper of a dog, hardly anyone ever notices him. ;) ~ karen!
J
I can't believe you are giving out that much private information about someone who is not you!
Do not do this!
suzanne
Hope this is a joke. "Happy days" to you in case not.
Kay
Ha! Happy days, I get it now, lol! I was thinking Fozie the cat / muppet. (The muppet was a bear of course.)
Kay
I'm pretty sure she just made that up as an example.