Don't bother using ChatGPT to find Black Friday deals this season — here's why

ChatGPT has been all over the news lately and even lauded as a great way to find holiday gifts, but is it any good at offering credible Black Friday shopping help? In a word, no. Here's what happened when we tried to use ChatGPT for Black Friday deal shopping. From analyzing documents to composing emails, ChatGPT and other AI chatbots certainly have their benefits. But the idea of them replacing humans has everyone a little on edge — especially in the creative world. We decided to put the AI tool to the test to see if it's up for the task of taking our jobs as shopping reporters, particularly with Black Friday season in full swing. To kick things off in our experiment, we started with a basic question on a popular Black Friday shopping category: robot vacuums. We asked a pretty broad question — "What robot vacuums will go on sale for Black Friday?" — and ChatGPT responded with an even more broad response, which basically explained that it cannot pull live data on specific Black Friday deals for robot vacuums in 2023. So, maybe that question was too general and we needed to get more specific. I tried "Can you help me find Black Friday deals on the iRobot Roomba Combo j6+?" and ChatGPT gave me a list of places to look for deals on said vacuum, but no actual deals. Well, that didn't work. Credit: ChatGPT Getting more specific still didn't churn out any ACTUAL deals. Credit: ChatGPT At that point, things weren't looking good for ChatGPT. I switched up categories and wording to no avail. Here's a list of some of the other prompts I tried: What's the best Black Friday TV deal? What's the best Black Friday deal on AirPods? Can I get a laptop on sale for Black Friday? Will the Nintendo Switch be on sale for Black Friday? How much were the Beats Studio Buds on Black Friday in 2022? Show me the price history of AirPods Pro No matter how broad or specific my queries were, I received some variation of the same basic response as before: it cannot pull live data, but here are som