Finding & comparing products: 18 real cases

Track down hard-to-find smart glasses with Perplexity Pro, but not buy them (partial)

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses had been sold out since September 30, 2025, and blogger Joe ('bookofjoe') had found nothing through Google. Joe asked Perplexity Pro to help find a place to buy them. It took 'just under 9 minutes' and learned more than hours of Google searching had. The catch: buying required a mandatory in-person demo, and Joe had no interest in driving three hours each way to northern Virginia. One commenter urged suspicion of the AI's answer; Joe replied with Meta's own wording that a demo and fitting appointment is required. On StockX the glasses sold for around $830, against $799 retail.

Fill in product details a shopping site leaves out with Be My AI

Sana, who has been totally blind since birth and is Global Chief Privacy Officer at WSP, uses Be My AI to get information most shopping websites don't include. Looking for a coat, Sana wanted to know whether it had a belt and what color the zippers and buttons were; the website descriptions weren't full enough, and Be My AI 'filled in the gaps'. It helps on work trips too: once, unable to find the number for hotel reception, Sana pointed the phone camera at a card near the phone and had the answer in seconds.

Find furniture on Facebook Marketplace for a new apartment with Meta's Muse, while Dots got the accounts locked (partial)

Scientific American's Mary Randolph was moving apartments and tested Meta's Muse (named Mark) and OpenAI's Dots (named Sam) for a week. Muse logged in to their Facebook account, searched Marketplace for couches, lamps and rugs, and could draft and send messages to sellers with their approval, managing the replies while they did other things. They now own a Muse-sourced dining table. When they gave Dots their Facebook login to do the same, Meta flagged it as a bot and temporarily locked their Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Later, Muse pushed them seven times in three days to join Target's membership program and buy a lamp on sale.

Find the exact replacement part for a broken shaver tab from a photo and a voice note to ChatGPT

A small plastic tab broke on Michal Barodkin's Philips shaver after several years. Rather than replace the shaver, they sent ChatGPT a photo of the broken piece and described the problem in a voice message. It found the replacement part, with its Philips part number and a place to order it. It cost six dollars and they picked it up the next day.

Send four AI agents to get real car insurance quotes: Gemini and ChatGPT got none, Claude and Muse got five each

Thy Toeung needed to review their car insurance before their son turned 16. They made a data sheet listing every driver, vehicle and the cover they wanted, and asked Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Muse to act as their insurance-shopping agent and get real quotes from six reputable insurers. Gemini's auto-browse explained it couldn't use the websites and handed back a comparison table to fill in. ChatGPT took 2 hours and 279 messages across 12 attempts and got no quotes; Toeung believes sites such as Allstate, Nationwide and Liberty Mutual block AI agents. Claude ran for 3.3 hours and got 5 real quotes. Muse, on its free tier, used several sub-agents and got 5 quotes in about 20 minutes. Toeung switched insurer and got about twice the cover for around 40% of the previous price.

Find the cheapest seats left for an opera, a sold-out-looking play and Hamilton with Meta's Muse checking the official sites

PCWorld's Ben Patterson, a Manhattan theatre lover who can't afford Broadway every night, used Muse to hunt for ticket bargains. Asked how much tickets to Verdi's Macbeth at the Met were, it first gave a general web answer, but when asked to check the official site it opened a browser and found a $71 seat (including a $10 service charge) for a weekday evening, logged in and teed it up for checkout. Patterson cancelled, then had it go through every remaining performance of a limited-run Off-Broadway play, finding which had seats and the best price, $92.41. For Hamilton in the next 30 days it found a rear-mezzanine seat for a Saturday matinee at $222 all-in. Patterson didn't buy this time.

Find out which astrophotography gear you actually need before spending a budget, with Claude

tonyarkles was curious about astrophotography and had a budget to fill any gaps in their existing photography kit. Claude's conclusion was to get a $20 intervalometer and a battery adapter that runs off the wall: the lenses and tripod they already had were fine. It also pointed out that Jupiter and Venus were near conjunction, so a dark spot facing west would give a good timelapse that weekend, and later gave rough guidelines for a partial lunar eclipse that produced some amazing photos. tonyarkles now plans to spend the budget on a proper mount, but only after confirming they enjoy the hobby.

Work out why new running shoes felt wrong and find the old model second-hand with Gemini

Kevin R. Kosar replaced a favourite pair of New Balance 880v11 running shoes with a similar-looking $100 Fresh Foam X 860v14, and two test runs left their lower back slightly sore. Kosar asked Gemini to compare the two. It explained that the new shoe is a little heavier and built for overpronators, while the 880v11 is a neutral shoe. Gemini then pointed to second-hand retailers, where Kosar bought two pairs of slightly used 880v11s; the new pair became around-the-house shoes.

Try to buy dog treats on Amazon with ChatGPT agent (blocked), then on PetSmart (worked)

TechRadar's Eric Hal Schwartz asked ChatGPT agent to buy Purina dental chews for their new puppy on Amazon. It hit a 503 error page every time and finally said network restrictions made interacting with Amazon impossible. Asked to buy the same treats at PetSmart, it navigated the store and the multi-step checkout with no problem.

Build a reusable Gemini shopping-assistant prompt with live product links

A tech columnist asked Gemini 2.0 to write them a shopping-assistant prompt (role, workflow, follow-up questions and web search), loaded it into a chatbot wrapper with web browsing on, and fine-tuned it to return live product links. They say it delivered almost exactly what they needed in early tests, and lets them weight three key features, e.g. 'wet and dry', 'cheap' and 'rotary' for a men's shaver.

Rank used cars to test-drive and get a test-drive checklist with Grok

An X user says they gave Grok all the cars they were considering test-driving and it evaluated and ranked them, then gave them a detailed list of what to check on the test drive at each speed and under the hood. They say they bought a one-owner car with 48k miles and no accidents from CarMax.

Put three second-hand jacket options in a Depop cart with Gemini in Chrome

Wired's reviewer asked Chrome's Auto Browse for a leather jacket on Depop that fits an XL man; it searched, set the size filter, added three jackets to the cart and wrote a case for each. One was a decent-looking $40 jacket, but they note it simply picked the top three search results.

Pick a mattress under budget from real reviews with ChatGPT

The Sydney Morning Herald's Jessica Yun asked ChatGPT for the best mattress around $600, with top three picks based on quality and value informed by real reviews. They looked at all three, chose a hybrid mattress and paid for it in under 10 minutes, $59 under budget, and say they were delighted with it less than two weeks later.

Poster says:Bought in under 10 minutes, $59 below budget

Find an anti-glare screen protector that arrives on time with ChatGPT Atlas

Digital Trends' reviewer asked Atlas agent mode for an anti-glare screen protector for the iPhone 17 Pro; it matched the criteria, chose one that would arrive by their date at their location and stopped at Amazon's checkout page.

Track down a hard-to-find toy and reach checkout with ChatGPT agent

Testing ChatGPT agent for a week, a Tom's Guide writer asked it to find the hard-to-get Big Into Energy Labubu nearby and chose 'purchase' when it asked. In six minutes the agent found it, added it to the cart and went to checkout, then asked for shipping and card details; they took control of the agent's browser to finish the sale.

Shortlist vintage lamps on Etsy with ChatGPT agent (cart claim was false)

On ChatGPT agent's first day, The Verge's Hayden Field ran its suggested task to find five Japanese-inspired vintage lamps on Etsy under $200 with free shipping and add them to their cart. It worked for 50 minutes and then said it had added five lamps totalling around $825 to their cart, but when they checked Etsy on their own computer the cart was empty, because the agent was using its own browser session.

Research the best car to buy for $20k with Gemini Deep Research

The Neuron asked Gemini Deep Research for the best car to buy for $20k; it says Gemini researched 481 websites and added a lifetime ownership cost comparison of a Tesla Model 3, Toyota Prius and Camry.

Poster says:481 websites researched

Request a furniture quote with ChatGPT agent

In 11 minutes ChatGPT agent ran 13 searches, skipped JavaScript-heavy sites it couldn't read, and shortlisted wicker daybeds from server-rendered retailers so it could request a quote in Sydney.