The new personal shopper for all

Curated shopping now accessible to masses, thanks to artificial intelligence

- SUGANDHA MUKHERJEE

THERE WAS A time when only the wealthy could afford the luxury of a personal shopper, someone who understood their wardrobe, anticipated preferences and curated options.

For everyone else, the digital age merely multiplied the labour. Shoppers bounced between apps, scrolled through hundreds of listings, filled carts with half-certain choices and abandoned most of them before checkout. Even as online retail expanded, the burden of decision-making remained squarely on the consumer. But now there is a decisive shift. Artificial intelligence has stepped forward as the central decision-maker in how people discover and select what they buy.

The newest generation of AI shopping tools does not operate like search engines but like advisers where it is interpreting a person's needs and filtering the deluge of choice. ChatGPT's "shopping research" feature is emblematic of this change. Rather than sending users down a chain of links, it asks questions familiar to any good personal stylist like: What's your budget? How do you intend to use this product? What brands do you gravitate towards? It collates prices, reviews and trade-offs effortlessly before delivering a neatly structured buyer's guide.