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AI-assisted Shopping is the Talk of the Shopping Season

Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
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AI-assisted Shopping is the Talk of the Shopping Season

Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Major retail chains and tech companies are offering new or updated artificial intelligence tools in time for the holiday shopping season, hoping to give consumers an easier gift-buying experience and themselves an augmented share of online spending.

Although AI-powered purchases are in early stages, the shopping assistants and agents rolled out by the likes of Walmart, Amazon and Google can do more than the chatbots of holidays past. The latest versions were designed to provide personalized product recommendations, track prices and to place some orders through unscripted “conversations” with customers, The AP news reported.

Those features are on top of shopping updates from AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. In one of the season's most talked-about launches, Google this month introduced an AI agent that can be instructed to call local stores to ask if a desired product is in stock.

San Francisco software company Salesforce estimated that AI would influence $73 billion, or 22%, of all global sales in one way or another from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through Monday after the holiday, according to Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s director of consumer insights.

The figure, which stood at $60 billion a year ago, encompasses everything from a ChatGPT query to AI-supplied gift suggestions on a retailer’s website, Schwartz said.

Despite the advancements, AI’s impact on holiday shopping will be “relatively limited” this year since not every shopping site has useful tools and not every shopper is willing to try them, said Brad Jashinsky, a senior retail industry analyst at information technology research and consulting firm Gartner.

“The more retailers that launch these tools, the better they get, and the more that consumers get comfortable and start to seek them out,” Jashinsky said. "But customer behavior takes a long time to change.”

Here are three ways the technology is poised to influence holiday shopping habits in 2025:

Bypassing the search bar AI's potential to simplify the search for the perfect present is most apparent so far in tools that promise to give shoppers faster and more detailed results than a web browser with a lot fewer clicks.

OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT with a shopping research feature that provides personalized buyers' guides. The information comes from product pages, reviews. prices and a user's previous interactions with the chatbot. The tool works best for complicated products like electronics and appliances, or for “detail-heavy” items like beauty or sporting goods, OpenAI said.

Then there's Rufus, the shopping assistant that Amazon rolled out last year. It now remembers information customers previously fed it, like having four children that all like board games, for example. A user's browsing and purchase history and reviews are used to personalize recommendations.

Google upgraded its AI Mode search tool to provide answers to detailed questions composed in natural language. For example, users can tell the agent they want to buy a casual sweater to wear with skirt or jeans in New York in January that goes with a skirt or jeans,

Responses are pulled from Google's 50 billion product listings. The tool can also produce charts with side-by-side comparisons of prices, features, reviews and other factors. Previously, shoppers had to use keywords, filters and product links to find the information they needed.

“This is an expansionary moment, I think, for all of technology and for commerce,” Lilian Rincon, vice president of product, consumer shopping at Google, recently told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Walmart’s AI shopping assistant, Sparky, offers occasion-based recommendations and synthesizes reviews. An AI-powered gift finder on Target's app exclusively for the holidays responds to prompts such as the age and special hobbies of the recipient.

New pricing tools and alerts Tools for tracking online prices have been around for years, including CamelCamelCamel, a third-party service for Amazon prices, as well as Paypal’s Honey browser extension for monitoring thousands of online shops.

This holiday season, shoppers have new options.

Amazon launched a 90-day pricing history tracker this month for virtually everything it sells. Shoppers also now can set up alerts to receive notifications when prices on specific items fall within their budgets.

Google, which for years had a basic price tracker, launched a more advanced version that lets users refine their requests with details like a garment's size and color. Microsoft's Copilot also launched a price tracker this year.

Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, said he thinks the new pricing tools will add more pressure on retailers to make sure their prices are competitive.

“A lot of consumers that weren’t even looking for price alerts are going to discover price alerts for the first time,” Goldberg predicted.

New ways to buy Amazon, OpenAI and Google are racing to create tools that would allow for seamless AI-powered shopping by taking consumers from browsing to buying within the same program instead of having to go to a retailer's website to complete a purchase.

OpenAI launched a new instant checkout feature that lets users buy products suggested by ChatGPT without leaving the app. Users can order merchandise from Etsy sellers and from some brands that use Shopify, including Glossier, Skims and Spanx.

OpenAI and Walmart announced a similar deal in October, saying the partnership would allow ChatGPT members to use the instant checkout feature to shop for nearly everything available on Walmart’s website except for fresh food. For now, however, the feature only supports buying one item at a time.

A different deal Target struck with OpenAI lets shoppers put multiple items in a cart on ChatGPT, including fresh food products. But when customers are ready to pay for their orders, they are directed away from the chatbot to the Target app.

New tools from Amazon and Google will give shoppers a taste of having autonomous AI assistants do the buying for them. While the services still are limited, “agentic AI” is intended to be more independent and advanced than the generative AI chatbots that excel at research and writing, experts say.

Amazon is now letting Rufus automatically purchase items for customers who click an “auto buy” button while setting up price alerts. Once a product's price drops to the desired level, customers receive notice of their completed orders and have a limited window to cancel, the company said.

The e-commerce giant also started allowing shoppers to use Rufus searches for brand-name products on the Amazon app as a gateway to other retailers. If Amazon doesn't carry a desired item in its store, a “Shop Direct” button will take them to the website of a place that does.

Google's AI Mode price tracker also includes a “buy for me” option that automatically makes a customer's purchase through Google Pay when the price is right. The feature is available for products sold by Wayfair, Chewy, Quince and some Shopify merchants, and Google expects to keep adding more stores, the company said. sellers.

Google also expanded its web browser with an automated AI call feature that phones local businesses on behalf of customers looking for information or specific products. Google's program discloses to the store that it's an AI caller, and stores can choose not to participate, the company said.

Google said it's applying the feature initially to specific product categories: toys, health and beauty, and electronics. Target and Walmart declined to comment on whether this type of service would be part of their future plans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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17th Century Wreck Reappears from Stockholm Deep

The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
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17th Century Wreck Reappears from Stockholm Deep

The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)

A 17th century Swedish Navy shipwreck buried underwater in central Stockholm for 400 years has suddenly become visible due to unusually low Baltic Sea levels.

The wooden planks of the ship's well-preserved hull have since early February been peeking out above the surface of the water off the island of Kastellholmen, providing a clear picture of its skeleton.

"We have a shipwreck here, which was sunk on purpose by the Swedish Navy," Jim Hansson, a marine archeologist at Stockholm's Vrak - Museum of Wrecks, told AFP.

Hansson said experts believe that after serving in the navy, the ship was sunk around 1640 to use as a foundation for a new bridge to the island of Kastellholmen.

Archeologists have yet to identify the exact ship, as it is one of five similar wrecks lined up in the same area to form the bridge, all dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

"This is a solution, instead of using new wood you can use the hull itself, which is oak" to build the bridge, Hansson said.

"We don't have shipworm here in the Baltic that eats the wood, so it lasts, as you see, for 400 years," he said, standing in front of the wreck.

Parts of the ship had already broken the surface in 2013, but never before has it been as visible as it is now, as the waters of the Baltic Sea reach their lowest level in about 100 years, according to the archaeologist.

"There has been a really long period of high pressure here around our area in the Nordics. So the water from the Baltic has been pushed out to the North Sea and the Atlantic," Hansson explained.

A research program dubbed "the Lost Navy" is underway to identify and precisely date the large number of Swedish naval shipwrecks lying on the bottom of the Baltic.

Varieties

China Has Slashed Air Pollution, but the ‘War’ Isn’t Over 

This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
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China Has Slashed Air Pollution, but the ‘War’ Isn’t Over 

This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)

Fifteen years ago, Beijing's Liangma riverbanks would have been smog-choked and deserted in winter, but these days they are dotted with families and exercising pensioners most mornings.

The turnaround is the result of a years-long campaign that threw China's state power behind policies like moving factories and electrifying vehicles, to improve some of the world's worst air quality.

Pollution levels in many Chinese cities still top the World Health Organization's (WHO) limits, but they have fallen dramatically since the "airpocalypse" days of the past.

"It used to be really bad," said Zhao, 83, soaking up the sun by the river with friends.

"Back then when there was smog, I wouldn't come out," she told AFP, declining to give her full name.

These days though, the air is "very fresh".

Since 2013, levels of PM2.5 -- small particulate that can enter the lungs and bloodstream -- have fallen 69.8 percent, Beijing municipality said in January.

Particulate pollution fell 41 percent nationwide in the decade from 2014, and average life expectancy has increased 1.8 years, according to the University of Chicago's Air Quality Life Index (AQLI).

China's rapid development and heavy coal use saw air quality decline dramatically by the 2000s, especially when cold winter weather trapped pollutants close to the ground.

There were early attempts to tackle the issue, including installing desulphurization technology at coal power plants, while factory shutdowns and traffic control improved the air quality for events like the 2008 Olympics.

But the impact was short-lived, and the problem worsened.

- Action plan -

Public awareness grew, heightened by factors like the US embassy in Beijing making monitoring data public.

By 2013, several international schools had installed giant inflatable domes around sport facilities to protect students.

That year, multiple episodes of prolonged haze shrouded Chinese cities, with one in October bringing northeastern Harbin to a standstill for days as PM2.5 levels hit 40 times the WHO's then-recommended standard.

The phrase "I'm holding your hand, but I can't see your face" took off online.

Later that year, an eight-year-old became the country's youngest lung cancer patient, with doctors directly blaming pollution.

As concerns mounted, China's ruling Communist Party released a ten-point action plan, declaring "a war against pollution".

It led to expanded monitoring, improved factory technology and the closure or relocation of coal plants and mines.

In big cities, vehicles were restricted and the groundwork was laid for widespread electrification.

For the first time, "quantitative air quality improvement goals for key regions within a clear time limit" were set, a 2016 study noted.

These targets were "the most important measure", said Bluetech Clean Air Alliance director Tonny Xie, whose non-profit worked with the government on the plan.

"At that time, there were a lot of debates about whether we can achieve it, because (they were) very ambitious," he told AFP.

The policy targeted several key regions, where PM2.5 levels fell rapidly between 2013 and 2017, and the approach was expanded nationwide afterwards.

"Everybody, I think, would agree that this is a miracle that was achieved in China," Xie said.

China's success is "entirely" responsible for a decline in global pollution since 2014, AQLI said last summer.

- 'Low-hanging fruits' gone -

Still, in much of China the air remains dangerous to breathe by WHO standards.

This winter, Chinese cities, including financial hub Shanghai, were regularly among the world's twenty most polluted on monitoring site IQAir.

Linda Li, a running coach who has lived in both Beijing and Shanghai, said air quality has improved, but she still loses up to seven running days to pollution in a good month.

A top environment official last year said China aimed to "basically eliminate severe air pollution by 2025", but the government did not respond when AFP asked if that goal had been met.

Official 2025 data found nationwide average PM2.5 concentrations decreased 4.4 percent on-year.

Eighty-eight percent of days featured "good" air quality.

However, China's current definition of "good" is PM2.5 levels of under 35 micrograms per cubic meter, significantly higher than the WHO's recommended five micrograms.

China wants to tighten the standard to 25 by 2035.

The last five years have also seen pollution reduction slow.

The "low-hanging fruits" are gone, said Chengcheng Qiu from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Qiu's research suggests pollution is shifting west as heavy industry relocates to regions like Xinjiang, and that some cities in China have seen double-digit percentage increases in PM2.5 in the last five years.

"They can't just stop all industrial production. They need to find cleaner ways to produce the output," Qiu said.

There is hope for that, given China's status as a renewable energy powerhouse, with coal generation falling in 2025.

"Cleaner air ultimately rests on one clear direction," said Qiu.

"Move beyond fossil fuels and let clean energy power the next stage of development."

Varieties

Sydney Man Jailed for Mailing Reptiles in Popcorn Bags 

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
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Sydney Man Jailed for Mailing Reptiles in Popcorn Bags 

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)

A Sydney man who tried to post native lizards, dragons and other reptiles out of Australia in bags of popcorn and biscuit tins has been sentenced to eight years in jail, authorities said Tuesday.

The eight-year term handed down on Friday was a record for wildlife smuggling, federal environment officials said.

A district court in Sydney gave the man, 61-year-old Neil Simpson, a non-parole period of five years and four months.

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from seized parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania, the officials said in a statement.

The animals -- including shingleback lizards, western blue-tongue lizards, bearded dragons and southern pygmy spiny-tailed skinks -- were posted in 15 packages between 2018 and 2023.

"Lizards, skinks and dragons were secured in calico bags. These bags were concealed in bags of popcorn, biscuit tins and a women's handbag and placed inside cardboard boxes," the statement said.

The smuggler had attempted to get others to post the animals on his behalf but was identified by government investigators and the New South Wales police, it added.

Three other people were convicted for taking part in the crime.

The New South Wales government's environment department said that "the illegal wildlife trade is not a victimless crime", harming conservation and stripping the state "and Australia of its unique biodiversity".