We knew artificial intelligence would cost jobs, but no one expected George Bailey and Santa to be among the first impacted.
AI is seeping into the holiday season. And it’s quickly becoming nearly as pervasive as that Mariah Carey Christmas song. There are Santa chatbots, AI gift-guide aids and, in a particularly galling move, an AI-generated Jimmy Stewart to tell you a bedtime story.
OpenAI is the biggest name in the AI holiday rush. The company behind ChatGPT rolled out SantaGPT earlier this month. The GPT-4-powered Santabot says it’s here to “[spread] holiday cheer and [help] with festive gift ideas.”
One catch: If you want to speak with AI Santa, you need to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, which will run you $20 a month, likely a bit more than you shell out for the milk and cookies you leave for the jolly fellow each year.
Want something a bit more permanent? In that case, a different AI Santa chatbot, from Austin advertising firm Hunt.Gather, might be your best bet. Through December 17, the company is hosting Santa’s Magical Mailroom, where you can arrange for a letter from Santa to be sent to a child, friend, or loved one.
You’ll be asked to enter three pieces of information about the recipient, to give the AI some context about who “Santa” is writing to. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see what Santa intends to send. If you approve, the letter will be printed in (what appears to be) Santa’s handwriting, then sent to your recipient in a red envelope via USPS. (If you don’t approve, you can start over and adjust your answers to the AI’s questions.)
There’s a $20 charge for this, but at least the money is donated to Girls Who Code. (Just beware that the letterhead includes a link to the website, so curious youngsters might get a sad surprise if they follow that link online.)
While it’s not quite so directly holiday themed, sleep and mediation app Calm is also leaning on AI for a service for its premium users. An AI-generated version of the voice of actor Jimmy Stewart—a Christmas fixture since his starring role in It’s a Wonderful Life—was created using the Respeecher tool. (Stewart’s family and estate reportedly consented to the project.)
The story’s title? What else? “It’s a Wonderful Sleep Story.”
“Well, hello. I’m James Stewart. But, well, you can call me Jimmy,” the AI-generated voice says in the story’s intro. “Tonight, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a heartwarming story of love, of loss, of hope, and of joy. But most of all, it’s a wonderful sleep story.”
You can judge for yourself how realistic the voice sounds in a clip from Variety.
All of this comes as more and more retailers are incorporating AI into their toolbox to lure holiday shoppers. The Salesforce Shopping Index, which analyzes data from more than 1.5 billion consumers on retail sites using Salesforce platforms, finds that a growing number of online orders have been influenced by AI over the last 12 months. And 10% of the shoppers it surveyed plan to use generative AI to help them find gifts for friends and loved ones.
“AI has already influenced 16% of the purchases made around the globe in the last six weeks,” says Rob Garf, VP and GM of retail at Salesforce. “We anticipate retailers leaning into both predictive and generative AI throughout Cyber Week to drive costs down and loyalty up.”
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