If you've ever spent hours researching a purchase only to still feel unsure or worse, realize later that you paid too much, this episode is for you. Shopping has become more complex, more time consuming, and more expensive than it needs to be. In this how AAI episode, Neo and I get practical about how to use AI as your
personal shopping assistant. You'll learn how to compare products without drowning inspects, cut through biased reviews, find the best price and discount codes, and even set up AI to watch prices for you so that you can buy with confidence and save money without the overwhelm. Welcome to how IAI with me Doctor Amantha Imber and Neo Applin, head of Inventium AI. Each episode we share one practical way to
use AI better at work and in life. No fluff, no tech jargon, just things you can use straight away. So we are recording this a few weeks after Christmas break and I think it's fair to say that a lot of people do a lot of shopping over that time of year or this time of year. And I know that you and I, Neo both use AI a lot in helping us make good decisions with shopping and importantly saving money. So let's talk through your journey of buying something. What do you want to use as an example?
What is something that you've recently bought and used AI for that process.
I've been looking for the last two or three months for a music streamer, So it's like a sonassy thing. I've got an amp I've had for ten years or something like that, but I want to be able to stream from my phone to this amp through a box. Great. There are so many of these on the market, and I don't know which one's good. I don't know which was bad, or where you buy them from, which features they got, what kind of plugs they've got, all those kind of things. I use Perplexity a lot for that.
I used some of the other adels for someone, but I found Perplexity was awesome for comparing these two different products, comparing social reviews on these things, which one should I get, pros and cons all those kind of things. So for researching of what product you need to solve your problem, because that's generally what I am buying, then AI is amazing for that.
So what can you give me examples of the types of prompts that you're putting in and also what you're getting perplexity to search, because I know that you can have it search the Internet, you can have it search social media media. So take us through in more detail how you're using it there.
Yep, So it might be here's the problem I've got, what could I use to solve it? Or what are other people doing to solve that kind of problem? So it's like at the start of your journey. Really good for those kind of things. When you're starting to find a couple of products, then I would do a comparison. So I've got here, what's the in between product A
and product B, and Perplexity will compare that. Often it puts it in a table, which I really like to be able to say different prices, different features, different versions. Really good for software comparison as well, like if I'm going to buy software A or software B, what does it have? Those kind of things I from bringing a solution C into the mix and then have a discussion with AI like it was my personal shopping assistant, like shopping concierge. Is this better than that? Why would I
use this one over that one? Actually use those kind of questions and get it to tell you why i'd buy one thing over another. Like here's an example, I have an old PlayStation four. I don't game enough to warrant buying a PlayStation five, but I still look at a PlayStation five and I saw there's a PlayStation five pro, and it's like, what's the between that and the basics? And is it got to disk drive? All those kind of things. AI is really good to give you those
easy comparisons. Other than that, what you're either going to do is either by the wrong one or you're going to spend an awful lot of time searching the internet. It's really useful for things that are really complicated, like TVs or washing machines. Like all the dad features on washing machines, I don't know what they are, and they go proprietary different names for the same thing as the other company. Get AI to sort the complexity out for you so you can then decide what you want to buy.
And so you said Perplexity is your go to Why Perplexity over chat GPT because they both search the Internet?
Yes they do. I prefer Perplexity for a couple of reasons. One is it's for me. It's been the granddaddy of the AI plus Internet together. The others added into Internet later, so it's almost like the Internet or an after thought as far as it goes. Because Perplexity is a bit like Google that searches the Internet, and it has indexes on the Internet and things like that. Under the hood,
CHCHBT is simply using makes it's being. Under the hood, it'll run a being search and then read the top ten pages on being and give it back to you. Whereas perplexity is its own thing, it does its own searches. If you're a Google person and you love your Google ecosystem, Google's got an AI mode which does a really similar thing to perplexity, so give that a go as well. In fact, you what you might do is what I
do is do an ab test. Try your prompt in perplexity, Try the same prompt in the AI mode on Google and see whether you get a different respots.
And how do you access AI mode on Google? Because it's not to be confused with the AI overview that Google also gives if you're in normal Google dot com.
Yeah, the with Google if you go to Google dot com, like not your address bar at the top and not the home page on your browser, like actually go to Google dot com, and you'll notice that in the search box in the middle of the page, on the right hand side, there's a thing that says AI mode, And when you click on that, it looks really similar to like Gemini and CHGPT, and it looks like a large language model. And with that AI mode you can give
more background. What I mean by that is general searching on Google. You've got to use keyword search, so it might be best PlayStation Gaming twenty twenty five, something like you feel like you're a caveman, right, and you're giving keyword now go kind of thing, Whereas with the AI mode you can give more background. So you could say, I'm an occasional gamer, but I've got a whole bunch of PlayStation four discs, I want to play it on
PlayStation five. How do I do that? Or I'm after a washing machine for a family of four, what's the best one to buy? Rather than just best washing machine twenty twenty five? Right, So AMI can take that context that does a much better job, but PERLEXI does the same. More context you can give it the better obviously thrown upload company documents if you're not allowed to.
Okay, let's talk about saving money, because I think that that matters to everyone. So how do you use AI? Once you've decided on the product that you're buying to find the best price, what are you using and how are you prompting it?
I go between AI mode on Google and also perplexity to find that best price. And so once I've decided what I want, So this streamer that I bought is the wim Ultra, believe it or not, and I was like, where do I buy it? And a win Ultra what's the best price? What's the best historical low price? So I've got those kind of things in there now. Interestingly enough, it gave me a bunch of retailers that I hadn't heard of. But then I was like, no, no, I want
Australian ones. And it can then obviously refine down if you want to see something locally like a washing machine, maybe you want to see it, touch a play it, then go I only want Melbourne, or I only want Sydney or wherever you might live. Or you might say I've got a budget of this, find me products that fit that budget. Or it might be what's on special this month or what's the historical lows those kind of things, so you can work with it to get the kind of priced information that you want.
I like the historical lows. How like, how would you use that if you wanted to buy something in the next couple of months and the historical low was I don't know, significantly less than it is now. Can you prompt the AI to tell you when to expect the next low or predict sales or anything like that.
Well, that's a good one. You probably could. Like if the last historical low was of Black Friday sales, then it will probably predict it'll be the next Black Friday sales, so you could do that. Well, I'd probably use AIS if you don't need to buy that thing straight away. What you could do is get a scheduled prompt, So in chachipt and copilt and others, you can get it to do something every so often. So you might say, every week, I want you to search these eight websites
for this product. If the price is below this price, then I want you to let me know or something that, or give me a list of the prices for this product across those ten retails or something like that. You'll then highlight that and then continue an email each day each week when it runs that prompt, So it's a scheduled prompt that you can do in CHETBT and in a copilot and others.
Now, another way to save money is through discount codes. How are you using AI to help find those discount codes?
Well, not everywhere has a discount code, as much as I want everywhere to have a discount code. And some of the discount codes they disappear, and they're old, all those kind of things. So the problem is finding them, and the problem is finding ones that are up to date. There are discount code websites, and I've found them to be scammy, spammy, discusting. Whatever. I've found just as good,
if not better, using perplexity, better results using perplexity. So they still can be out of date, they still may not work, but at least you don't go through that scammy spamy stuff. And I find it's actually easier, better, faster.
So what kind of a are you putting into perplexity to find good discount codes?
Help me find discount codes for the retailer you've picked, or helped me find retailer discount codes for this product for this retailer or any retailer who can button, you know, sell this particular product. So if you're doing makeup, you might say ad or beauty. Maybe that's you know, to have a discount codes going at the moment or something, and they'll search a whole bunch of internet websites and
social is the other cool thing about Perplexity. You can say, search social sources in particular, so whether that discount code's being shared on some kind of community forum, it would be more likely to pick those kind of things up. So yeah, you can find discount codes on Perplexity. Once again, not one hundred percent, but it's still pretty good.
Amazing Leo, thank you so much for sharing how we can save money when we are going shopping. Lots of awesome tips that I hope maybe might save with some money today if you happen to be buying something. Thank you. If you found this useful, please help us spread the AI love and share it with someone who you think would benefit from knowing what you now know. And if you're ready to really start mastering AI, check out inventium
dot ai. We help individuals, teams, and organizations turn Jenai into a real work superpower, saving ten plus hours a week and staying future ready without the jargon or overwhelmed. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time on how IAI. How IAI was hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan. A big thank you to Martin Imba who does our sound editing, and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to John Kilby who composed the theme music.