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Show HN: Sherlock – AI that chats with your friends about their gift wishes

13 points by davidoort 3y ago

Giftit is reimagining the gifting experience through an AI persona called Sherlock which anonymously surveys your friends on messaging apps like WhatsApp and iMessage and shares the transcript of the conversation with you along with shoppable gift ideas.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
davidoort 3y ago
I truly appreciate all the honest feedback and tough love Let me share a bit more about why and how we're building Giftit: The problem - it's hard to give both fitting AND surprising gifts. We've surveyed hundreds of people including our beta testing community and stumbled across the following conundrum: - 90% of people don't share their wishes unless they're asked - 75% of people don't know what to get and don't want to ask This obviously leads to an information gap between gift-givers and receivers which frequently leads to crappy, impersonal, duplicate gifts or no gifts at all. In the US alone, economist Prof. Waldfogel has estimated that this racks up to a $20B loss which represents the difference in actual value of the gift and the perceived value by the receiver. Our solution - Giftit's social wishlists and the Sherlock chatbot - Once you download the free Giftit app on iOS or Android, you'll be able to select any of your contacts (who don't need to be on Giftit) - Sherlock will then anonymously reach out to this contact on either iMessage or WhatsApp and start chatting with them about their wishes, current interests, etc. - From the app, you'll be able to see in real time the transcript of the conversation of Sherlock with your contact and get shoppable gift suggestions. - If Sherlock is not asking something specific you want to know about, you can inject a message into the conversation which will directly show up on the chat app of your contact (e.g. "what's your dress size?") --- I'll be the first to admit that this is definitely not for everyone. I would personally not use this for gifting someone I spend a lot of time around since I typically know what they're into. However, there's a long tail of people in my life like old friends, family, etc that I live far away from and that I'm a bit more clueless on. If you're someone that doesn't mind asking directly for people's wishes or sharing them without being asked, then this is probably also not for you. I encourage you all to give it a try and share more feedback
hannah55 3y ago
[flagged]
jawns 3y ago
The user experience from the friend's perspective is ... getting an unsolicited chat message from a bot, with no way to know who sent it on their behalf, or what will be done with the information provided? I'm guessing conversion rates will be fairly low.
- umgefahren 3y ago
  Yes it actually is. I was in the closed beta and all friends that got the message where either suspicious of it, annoyed or didn’t react. I think there is little to none that can be done, unless a lot of people use it and then it becomes somewhat annoying because you’d have to answer those things all the time. I think the best application would be Secret Santa. It’s a cool idea though and the app is really pretty.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    How boring that would be though. Everyone tells the bot what they want and then people go and buy the things. Doesn't get anymore stupid consumerist than that.
    - chankstein38 3y ago
      Right? As much as big retail corps have ruined the season, the reason I love it is the personal connections, time with family, and cozy vibes of the decorations. Gifts are part of that but the whole point of gifting is that moment of "Hey I was thinking about you and know you liked this thing" and them being happy someone knew them well enough to pick out a great gift. The idea of some AI messaging my friends to anonymously ask them what they want for christmas is gross. This is effectively a more complicated Amazon Wishlist for each person.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  > Find out what your friends want without killing the surprise. And once you participate once, the surprise will definitely be killed because at that point it'll be clear someone is gifting to you what you just told the computer.
barbazoo 3y ago
Talk to people and be genuinely interested in them. Throughout the year, take notes of what they like, what they wish for, etc. You'll never have issues coming up with gift ideas.
lowkey_ 3y ago
In what way does this not ruin the surprise? It seems like you'll know exactly what you're getting, just not who it's coming from. The surprise is which gift, not which friend is getting the gift. I'd have expected it to be more like... gauging the types of things they'd like, but keeping it super broad, to help hint you in the right direction.
chankstein38 3y ago
Couldn't YOU just message the person and ask? Isn't the whole point of this season to be about family and personal connection? Sure, it's been co-opted by corporations to be nothing but spend spend spend but do we have to accept that? What does this do that just messaging the person doesn't? To my eyes, it just makes the interaction impersonal and spammy. I don't answer texts from random numbers to begin with I'm sure as hell not answering some random "What gift do you want" survey.
dcastm 3y ago
Why do you need a chatbot? I'm genuinely wondering about it. It feels that you could use the same 3/4 questions and then send the results to the user. Maybe the "smart" part of it would be giving recommendations based on those results.
pockybum522 3y ago
Nothing like letting your friends know that you care about them but only in a materialistic consumerist sense. "Hi I want to know what you want for a gift but I don't actually care enough about you to talk to you about it myself."
kleiba 3y ago
Is this a late April's Fools joke?
arolihas 3y ago
I would want to know who is asking to buy me a gift before I say anything to an anonymous chatbot. And at that point they should just talk to me.
libraryatnight 3y ago
this sounds like you want to trick people into letting you middle-man conversations with their friends so you can collect market data. gross.

13 points by davidoort 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

davidoort 3y ago

I truly appreciate all the honest feedback and tough love Let me share a bit more about why and how we're building Giftit: The problem - it's hard to give both fitting AND surprising gifts. We've surveyed hundreds of people including our beta testing community and stumbled across the following conundrum: - 90% of people don't share their wishes unless they're asked - 75% of people don't know what to get and don't want to ask This obviously leads to an information gap between gift-givers and receivers which frequently leads to crappy, impersonal, duplicate gifts or no gifts at all. In the US alone, economist Prof. Waldfogel has estimated that this racks up to a $20B loss which represents the difference in actual value of the gift and the perceived value by the receiver. Our solution - Giftit's social wishlists and the Sherlock chatbot - Once you download the free Giftit app on iOS or Android, you'll be able to select any of your contacts (who don't need to be on Giftit) - Sherlock will then anonymously reach out to this contact on either iMessage or WhatsApp and start chatting with them about their wishes, current interests, etc. - From the app, you'll be able to see in real time the transcript of the conversation of Sherlock with your contact and get shoppable gift suggestions. - If Sherlock is not asking something specific you want to know about, you can inject a message into the conversation which will directly show up on the chat app of your contact (e.g. "what's your dress size?") --- I'll be the first to admit that this is definitely not for everyone. I would personally not use this for gifting someone I spend a lot of time around since I typically know what they're into. However, there's a long tail of people in my life like old friends, family, etc that I live far away from and that I'm a bit more clueless on. If you're someone that doesn't mind asking directly for people's wishes or sharing them without being asked, then this is probably also not for you. I encourage you all to give it a try and share more feedback

hannah55 3y ago

[flagged]

jawns 3y ago

The user experience from the friend's perspective is ... getting an unsolicited chat message from a bot, with no way to know who sent it on their behalf, or what will be done with the information provided? I'm guessing conversion rates will be fairly low.

umgefahren 3y ago
Yes it actually is. I was in the closed beta and all friends that got the message where either suspicious of it, annoyed or didn’t react. I think there is little to none that can be done, unless a lot of people use it and then it becomes somewhat annoying because you’d have to answer those things all the time. I think the best application would be Secret Santa. It’s a cool idea though and the app is really pretty.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  How boring that would be though. Everyone tells the bot what they want and then people go and buy the things. Doesn't get anymore stupid consumerist than that.
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    Right? As much as big retail corps have ruined the season, the reason I love it is the personal connections, time with family, and cozy vibes of the decorations. Gifts are part of that but the whole point of gifting is that moment of "Hey I was thinking about you and know you liked this thing" and them being happy someone knew them well enough to pick out a great gift. The idea of some AI messaging my friends to anonymously ask them what they want for christmas is gross. This is effectively a more complicated Amazon Wishlist for each person.
barbazoo 3y ago
> Find out what your friends want without killing the surprise. And once you participate once, the surprise will definitely be killed because at that point it'll be clear someone is gifting to you what you just told the computer.

barbazoo 3y ago

Talk to people and be genuinely interested in them. Throughout the year, take notes of what they like, what they wish for, etc. You'll never have issues coming up with gift ideas.

lowkey_ 3y ago

In what way does this not ruin the surprise? It seems like you'll know exactly what you're getting, just not who it's coming from. The surprise is which gift, not which friend is getting the gift. I'd have expected it to be more like... gauging the types of things they'd like, but keeping it super broad, to help hint you in the right direction.

chankstein38 3y ago

Couldn't YOU just message the person and ask? Isn't the whole point of this season to be about family and personal connection? Sure, it's been co-opted by corporations to be nothing but spend spend spend but do we have to accept that? What does this do that just messaging the person doesn't? To my eyes, it just makes the interaction impersonal and spammy. I don't answer texts from random numbers to begin with I'm sure as hell not answering some random "What gift do you want" survey.

dcastm 3y ago

Why do you need a chatbot? I'm genuinely wondering about it. It feels that you could use the same 3/4 questions and then send the results to the user. Maybe the "smart" part of it would be giving recommendations based on those results.

pockybum522 3y ago

Nothing like letting your friends know that you care about them but only in a materialistic consumerist sense. "Hi I want to know what you want for a gift but I don't actually care enough about you to talk to you about it myself."

kleiba 3y ago

Is this a late April's Fools joke?

arolihas 3y ago

I would want to know who is asking to buy me a gift before I say anything to an anonymous chatbot. And at that point they should just talk to me.

libraryatnight 3y ago

this sounds like you want to trick people into letting you middle-man conversations with their friends so you can collect market data. gross.