By Sarah Butler
Publication Date: 2025-12-10 13:00:00
Christmas shopping – some love it, for others it’s a chore, and this year for the first time many of us will outsource the annual task of finding gift ideas to artificial intelligence.
While traditional internet searches, social media – particularly TikTok and Instagram – and simply strolling down a local high street will still be the main routes to gifts for most this year, around a quarter of people in the UK are already using AI to find the right products, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
For brands that appeal to younger people, the revolution is well underway: rival consultancy KPMG says up to 30% of shoppers aged 25 to 34 are using AI to search for products, compared to 1% of those over 65.
Asking a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT or Gemini what to get your father-in-law—instead of typing “whiskey” or “socks” into Google or DuckDuckGo—seems like a small change in habits. However, this represents a sea change for retailers who are used to it.
