PORTLAND, Maine — When December rolls around, Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media in Portland starts thinking about his annual tradition of coming up with ideas for 207 for tech-oriented holiday presents. As he puts it, gifts for geeks.
His suggestions run the gamut from robots for kids to an AI assistant that can write a heartfelt message for you in a card or letter. Here are the talking points Rich compiled.
What do you have for us this year?
Well, now that we've been doing this for over a decade, you know that I try to come up with a theme for each year, and since this is the year of AI, that seemed like a perfect focus for our gift finding and giving.
There are tons of AI-powered gift giving sites out there, and they all do basically the same thing: you enter information about the recipient, your budget, and their interests, and the AI tool finds appropriate gifts. Usually, on Amazon on other sites that have affiliate programs, which is some of how these tools make their money.
One that I liked was GiftHuntr, if only because after testing a few, this one seemed to have the best gift ideas, at least for the person on my list, and the suggestions seemed to go way beyond just Amazon.
Another cool thing about GiftHuntr is the ability to drop someone's Instagram handle in the search box, and it will scour their public posts and put together gift ideas for them.
That seems helpful, but you said most of these tools are the same. Were there any that were different?
One twist was from a printing company called Text2Present. It uses a text to image prompt like AI image creation tools such as Midjourney or Dall-E, but then it shows you how it would look on different objects that they can print for you, like stickers, t-shirts, and laptop sleeves.
It's a clever idea, but I found that I didn't have a lot of control over the images, so you may need to try multiple times to really get something print-worthy.
Did you discover any gifts that were powered by AI, but weren't necessary recommended by an AI tool?
There are a lot out there, including robots for kids and board games that allow you to play against AI when there's not another person around, but one that I'm considering for myself is the Obsbot. It's a webcam with AI-powered facial recognition cooked in. It can follow you around the room if you're doing more than just sitting and staring at the webcam, and reacts to specific hand signals as well, allowing you to zoom in or out or select a specific face to follow. It's currently on sale for $179, and I bet you could write it off as a business expense.
Whether you go to the card store and buy a card, or just send an e-card, there is an expectation that you send a thoughtful message along with a gift. Any AI tools out there to assist us?
If you don't mind a little snark in your AI assistant, you can check out Lazy Card, who's tagline is "when you care just enough." The app will ask you a series of questions about the recipient, all the while wondering out loud if you forgot to wash the dishes or walked through the house with muddy boots.
However, besides telling it what your recipient enjoys, you can also direct the tone of the card, from kind to sarcastic and everywhere in between.
When you're done, you can even have it mail a real greeting card with the message or an e-card for free. You can also upload your own images or photos to customize the card.