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NoneJoe Biden begins final White House holiday season with turkey pardons for ‘Peach’ and ‘Blossom’DA suggests unusual idea for halting Trump's hush money case while upholding conviction
Tired of thinking about what gifts to get everyone this year? Artificial intelligence chatbots might help, but don’t expect them to do all the work or always give you the right answers. Anyone scouring the internet for Cyber Monday deals is likely going to encounter more conversational iterations of the chatbots that some retailers and e-commerce sites have built to provide shoppers with enhanced customer service. Some companies have integrated models infused with newer generative AI technologies, allowing shoppers to seek advice by asking naturally phrased questions like “What’s the best wireless speaker?” Retailers hope consumers use these chatbots, which are typically called shopping assistants — as virtual companions that help them discover or compare products. Prior chatbots were mostly used for task-oriented functions such as helping customers track down online orders or return ones that didn’t meet expectations. Amazon , the king of online retail, has said its customers have been questioning Rufus — the generative AI- powered shopping assistant it launched this year — for information such as whether a specific coffee maker is easy to clean, or what recommendations it has for a lawn game for a child’s birthday party. And Rufus, which is available for holiday shoppers in the U.S. and some other countries, is not the only shopping assistant out there. A select number of Walmart shoppers will have access this year to a similar chatbot the nation’s largest retailer is testing in a few product categories, including toys and electronics. Perplexity AI added something new to the AI chat-shopping world last month by rolling out a feature on its AI-powered search engine that enables users to ask a question like “What’s the best women’s leather boots?” and then receive specific product results that the San Francisco-based company says are not sponsored. “It has been adopted at pretty incredible scale,” Mike Mallazzo, an analyst and writer at retail research media company Future Commerce, said. Retailers with websites and e-commerce companies started paying more attention to chatbots when use of ChatGPT , an artificial intelligence text chatbot made by the company OpenAI, went mainstream in late 2022, sparking public and business interest in the generative AI technology that powers the tool. Victoria’s Secret, IKEA, Instacart and the Canadian retailer Ssense are among other companies experimenting with chatbots, some of which use technology from OpenAI . Even before the improved chatbots, online retailers were creating product recommendations based on a customer’s prior purchases or search history. Amazon was at the forefront of having recommendations on its platform, so Rufus’ ability to provide some is not particularly groundbreaking. But Rajiv Mehta, the vice president of search and conversational shopping at Amazon, said the company is able to offer more helpful recommendations now by programming Rufus to ask clarifying or follow-up questions. Customers are also using Rufus to look for deals, some of which are personalized, Mehta said. To be sure, chatbots are prone to hallucinations, so Rufus and most of the tools like it can get things wrong . Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, wrote in a November blog post that his firm tested Rufus by requesting gaming TV recommendations. The chatbot’s response included products that were not TVs. When asked for the least expensive options, Rufus came back with suggestions that weren’t the cheapest, Kaziukenas said. An Associated Press reporter recently asked Rufus to give some gift recommendations for a brother. The chatbot quickly spit out a few ideas for “thoughtful gifts,” ranging from a T-shirt and a keychain with charms to a bolder suggestion: a multifunctional knife engraved with the phrase “BEST BROTHER EVER.” After a 5-minute written conversation, Rufus offered more tailored suggestions — a few Barcelona soccer jerseys sold by third-party sellers. But it wasn’t able to say which seller offered the lowest price. When asked during another search for a price comparison on a popular skin serum, Rufus showed the product’s pre-discounted price instead of its present one. “Rufus is constantly learning,” Amazon’s Mehta said during an interview. Shop AI, a chatbot that Canadian e-commerce company Shopify launched last year, can also help shoppers discover new products by asking its own questions, such as soliciting details about an intended gift recipient or features the buyer wants to avoid. Shop AI has trouble, however, recommending specific products or identifying the lowest-priced item in a product category. The limitations show the technology is still in its infancy and has a long way to go before it becomes as useful as the retail industry — and many shoppers — wish it could be. To truly transform the shopping experience, shopping assistants will “need to be deeply personalized” and be able — on their own — to remember a customer’s order history, product preferences and purchasing habits, consulting giant McKinsey & Company said in an August report. Amazon has noted that Rufus’ answers are based on information contained in product listings, community Q&As and customer reviews, which would include the fake reviews that are used to boost or diminish sales for products on its marketplace. The large language model that powers the chatbot was also trained on the company’s entire catalog and some public information on the web, Trishul Chilimbi, an Amazon vice president who oversees AI research, wrote in the electrical engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum in October. But its unclear how Amazon and other companies are weighting different training components — such as reviews — in their recommendations, or how exactly the shopping assistants come up with them, according to Nicole Greene, an analyst at management consulting firm Gartner. Perplexity AI’s new shopping feature allows users to enter search queries such as “best phone case” and to receive answers derived from various sources, including Amazon and other retailers, such as Best Buy. Perplexity also invited retailers to share data about their products and said those that do would have an increased chance of having their items recommended to shoppers. But Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, suggested in a recent interview with Fortune magazine that he didn’t know how the new shopping feature recommended products to customers. But in an interview with the AP, Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko pushed back on that characterization, saying Srinivas’ comment “was probably taken out of context.” The context, he said, is that with generative AI technology “You can’t know in advance exactly what the output will be just based off of knowing what the inputs” are from the training materials. Shevelenko said retailers and brands need to know they can’t have their products recommended in Perplexity’s search engine because they’re “jamming key words” into their websites or using different techniques to show up better on search results “The way you show up in an answer is by having a better product and better features,” he said.
NEW YORK — Eager to preserve President-elect Donald Trump's hush money conviction even as he returns to office, prosecutors suggested various ways forward — including one based on how some courts handle criminal cases when defendants die. In court papers made public Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney's office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books. The proposals include freezing the case until Trump is out of office, or agreeing that any future sentence wouldn't include jail time. Another idea: closing the case with a notation that acknowledges his conviction but says that he was never sentenced and his appeal wasn't resolved because of presidential immunity. Former President Donald Trump appears in Manhattan criminal court May 30 during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York. The last is adopted from what some states do when a criminal defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether that option is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Judge Juan M. Merchan could innovate in what's already a unique case. "This remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding," prosecutors wrote. But at the same time, it wouldn't "precipitously discard" the "meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers." Expanding on a position they laid out last month, prosecutors acknowledged that "presidential immunity requires accommodation during a president's time in office," but they were adamant that the conviction should stand. They argued that Trump's impending return to the White House should not upend a jury's finding. Trump wants the case to be thrown out in light of his election. His communications director, Steven Cheung, called prosecutors' filing "a pathetic attempt to salvage the remains of an unconstitutional and politically motivated hoax." Trump has fought for months to reverse his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors said he fudged the documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier. Former President Donald Trump returns to the courtroom May 30 at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. He says they did not and denies wrongdoing. Trump portrays the case as a political attack ginned up by District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other Democrats. Trump's legal team argues that letting the case continue would present unconstitutional "disruptions" to his upcoming presidential term. Trump's attorneys also cited President Joe Biden's recent pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted of tax and gun charges. Biden complained that his son was unfairly prosecuted for political reasons — and Trump's lawyers say he was, too. Trump's lawyers argued that the possibility of a jail sentence — even if it's after he leaves office — would affect his presidency. Prosecutors suggested Merchan could address that concern by agreeing not to put him behind bars. It's unclear how soon Merchan could decide what to do next with the case. He could grant Trump's request for dismissal, go with one of the suggestions from prosecutors, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump's parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court, or choose some other option. Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. He was scheduled for sentencing late last month. After Trump's Nov. 5 election win, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the former and future president's sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. Merchan also delayed a decision on Trump's prior bid to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. A dismissal would erase Trump's conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record and possible prison sentence. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office. The hush money case was the only one of Trump's four criminal indictments to go to trial. Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith ended his two federal cases, which pertained to Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in each case. Former President Donald Trump speaks outside the courtroom after a jury convicted him of felony crimes for falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Thursday, May 30, 2024. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool) Former President Donald Trump sits in Manhattan criminal court, on May 13, 2024, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump talks to the media outside Manhattan criminal court in New York, on May 14, 2024. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, on April 30, 2024. (Justin Lane/Pool Photo via AP) Michael Cohen, right, leaves his apartment building in New York, on May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York, Thursday, May 30, 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump awaits the start of proceedings in Manhattan Criminal Court, on May 28, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, Pool) Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York, Thursday, May 30, 2024. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool) From left North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy look on as former President Donald Trump talks to the media as he arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on May 14, 2024. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP) A supporter of former President Donald Trump reads a "Jews for Trump" sign outside Manhattan Criminal Court, on May 29, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) Donald Trump, Jr. speaks to reporters across the street from former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York, on May 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) A supporter of former President Donald Trump and an anti-Trump protester fight outside Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) Robert De Niro, center, argues with a Donald Trump supporter after speaking to reporters in support of President Joe Biden across the street from Trump's criminal trial in New York, on May 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Donald Trump Jr. speaks outside Manhattan criminal court, on May 21, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) Former President Donald Trump talks to the media after a day of testimony in his trial at Manhattan Criminal court in New York, on May 10, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP) Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, wears a tie with photographs of former President Donald Trump during a press conference outside Manhattan criminal court, on May 21, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) Trump supporters wave flags and cheer as the motorcade carrying former President Donald Trump leaves the Manhattan Criminal court, on May 13, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah) Former President Donald Trump, seen through a camera viewfinder, speaks to members of the media at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on May 2, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump gestures as he returns to court after a lunch break, at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on May 16, 2024. (Mike Segar/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 21, 2024 in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP) Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather in Collect Pond Park outside Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson) Former President Donald Trump closes his eyes, during his trial at Manhattan criminal court on May 16, 2024, in New York. (Mike Segar/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom during his criminal trial at the Manhattan criminal court in New York, on May 6, 2024. (Brendan McDermid/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump walks to the courtroom at Manhattan criminal court as jurors are expected to begin deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York, on May 29, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP) Former President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower on his way to Manhattan criminal court, on April 15, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura) Former President Donald Trump sits in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, on May 20, 2024. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times via AP, Pool) Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email.
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