How AI tools can guide your weekend shopping and find the cheapest deals

Weekends often come with shopping plans, but visiting shop after shop for a single item without finding what you want can eat up an entire day. AI tools on the phone can now save that time. Using Google Lens, ChatGPT and the AI built into shopping apps, it is possible to find the best deal within minutes.

If you spot a dress, shoes or a watch on the street or on Instagram but do not know where to find it, Google Lens can help. Simply take a photo of the item, and Google's AI searches sites such as Amazon, Myntra and Flipkart to find where it is cheapest. This removes the need to go from shop to shop, as a single photo does the job.

While buying clothes, questions like "will this suit me" or "which colour should I pick" always come up, and there is no need to ask anyone else for this now. Telling ChatGPT or Gemini your colour, height and requirement, for instance that you need clothes for office, lets the AI suggest which shirt goes with which trousers, what the trending style is, and which bag or shoes to pair with it. This means AI does, for free, the job a stylist would otherwise charge for.

Nearly every store has a sale over the weekend, but figuring out which card gets the biggest discount can be a headache. Asking AI "which bank card has the biggest offer on mobiles or TVs this week" prompts it to check all the websites and provide a list. If a budget is specified, deals matching it can be found, which can save thousands of rupees.

Reading a thousand reviews before buying a phone or a mixer can take half a day. Now, Amazon shows an AI summary below the product. After going through all the reviews, the AI states what is good and bad about the product, making it possible to decide whether to buy it within five minutes.

Malls see huge crowds over the weekend, with no parking space and long billing queues. To avoid this, the Popular Times feature in Google Maps, which runs on AI, can be used. It shows what time a particular mall is likely to be less crowded, and going at that time saves a lot of time. So before stepping out this weekend, keeping the phone's AI ready along with your wallet can save time, money and hassle.