How AI can help you sleigh the holidays

From finding the perfect gifts for those annoying people who don’t tell you what they want - or, worse, tell you they don’t really want anything but definitely expect a gift - to planning festive gatherings, Christmas can all get a bit much. But what if I told you that AI could make the season of festive cheer easier and more fun?

Jingle bots and your gifting needs

You’re struggling to find a gift for your hard-to-shop-for... let’s start with auntie. You know she’ll be pleased with a box of mediocre smellies because it really is the thought that counts, but you also know she doesn’t really need or want them and you should do better. Last year’s Bayliss and Harding soap set is still on the side in the bathroom, unopened and destined for a re-gift. You need to skip past all the standard suggestions from your initial Google search or the Christmas department of your favourite shop, all of which are telling you the same thing: women want toiletries and purses*, men are into whisky and golf or beer and football (aka the two Men Types of the gifting aisle).

Enter AI. With personalised recommendations, smart search functions, and new and improved chatbots on most major shopping portals, AI can genuinely help. You know the person, AI knows what’s out there, you just need to bridge the gap by asking.

A recent survey by Accenture found that 95% of us believe generative AI can help them discover superior gifts, while 90% appreciate the suggestions provided by the most popular AI tools. Amazon's Rufus assistant, launched in February, has already answered tens of millions of questions from shoppers. Try the little chatbots you’ve been avoiding based on how bad they were a year ago – or just try the new Perplexity and ChatGPT functions. That, readers, is how you find the perfect ‘karma is a cat’ Christmas t-shirt for your Swiftie niece without running the risk she already has one just like it. It’s also how you find a matching t-shirt for her Swiftie Dad, who has no interest in golf, doesn’t want reminding about the football, and isn’t a fan of whisky or beer.

AI and your travel needs: Around the world in AI-ty days?

Holiday travel can be pretty grim – and expensive. AI can help here too – and not just by helping you sort the shopping from your armchair, avoiding travel altogether. AI-driven itinerary planning, predictive traffic information, and smart booking tools can take the stress out of your journey. CintSnap recently revealed that 38% of Americans and 36% of Brits have already used AI to assist with their travel planning. Flight and accommodation deals are the most valued AI function for travel planning.

Skyscanner, Kayak and Hopper are good for suggestions and pricing, but you can also try Mindtrip or Wonderplan if you are the kind of person who likes a good itinerary, or, like me, you just want to mess with the person who is about to spend a week writing an itinerary without using AI then claim they’re not a control freak when you suggest you use yours instead.

Party planning and Santa’s little AI helper

Hosting a Christmas party can be A Lot, but AI can help here too. If you’re going big there are options for guest list management (AirLST is good), venue suggestions and smart budgeting (Eventbrite now has impressive AI budgeting tools you can try). But you can also start simple. You already pull your favourite recipes from the web via your phone instead of a book, but you also have to do a bit of thinking about your Christmas dinner. Each element of a roast dinner is simple to cook but not forgetting anything and having it all ready at the same time is an art, as those of us who have had to dash back to the kitchen just after starting to eat to retrieve the cranberry sauce from the fridge can attest. ChatGPT and others are shockingly good at planning these days: tell it what you’re doing and when you want to eat and ask it to write the plan for what goes in the oven and when. Or you can generate your recipes through Let’s Foodie – which is also our Team Engine top tip for working out a plan for the leftovers.

If you want to be a little more creepy (and maybe you do; we haven’t met and I’m not here to judge) AI can also analyse data on your guests' past behaviour and preferences to create a highly personalised event experience. But let’s save that for next year. For now, just try some AI-powered calculations that help make sure the turkey is safe to eat.

The true story of Santa’s workshop: Backstage AI

We love sharing our advice on how you can use some simple AI tools to make your personal life easier and more fun. But the reality is that AI is revolutionising business and powering this new industrial-scale digital transformation. This year’s seasonal peak of consumerism will test a lot of the work companies have been doing with AI behind the scenes. AI-enabled logistics – along with festive drone displays, and automated Christmas lights – have been changed almost beyond recognition this year thanks to advances in the largely-unseen digital world. Those changes all make things a little bit magical for the rest of us.

Remember after Covid (and Brexit) when nothing was getting delivered if it involved a border or a distance of more than a few miles? Now, largely thanks to AI and machine learning, things seem to be back on track. AI is alleviating operational pressures, optimising supply chains, minimising waste, and predicting demand to stay ahead of potential problems.

This is your festive reminder that at Engine we specialise in advising organisations on AI and building affordable RAG (retrieval augmented generation) AI solutions – and ours work for SMEs and non-profit organisations, not just global retail and logistics giants. These kinds of solutions are making a real difference, in practice, today. If some AI feels a bit too magical for you and you're not sure where to start, we can help with making new toys you will definitely appreciate.

Happy holidays!

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*At Engine, we know already what all women want: pockets. You’re welcome.

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