Microsoft’s 3 new AI-powered shopping tools could save you time – and money

If you’ve ever wanted your own personal shopper, the next best thing may be here. On Thursday, Microsoft introduced a number of new AI-enhanced shopping features coming to its Bing search engine, Bing Chat, and Edge browser.

Among the new tools are product review summaries, price match monitors, and buying guides. What do those mean for shoppers? Saving time, saving money, and easily finding products you might not have known you needed. 

Also: How to use Bing Chat (and how it’s different from ChatGPT)

The review summary feature is the most straightforward. Ask Bing Chat for reviews of a product, and you’ll see real user feedback aggregated from several platforms. You’ll then get an AI summary that tells you what the overall opinion from those reviews is. Instead of wading through dozens of reviews, you can see a single generated consensus that gives you a broad overview as to how well a product is received. 

On the price match monitor side of things, when you search for a specific product, you’ll actually see not just a price comparison from various retailers, but a price history so you can see whether or not it’s a good time to buy. Once you do buy, Microsoft takes note of the price you paid and that retailer’s price match policy. If the price drops and you’re eligible to get some cash back, you’ll get an alert with information about how to request a price match. Since many retailers don’t advertise their price match policies front and center, this is a fantastic feature to make sure you’re not missing out on free money.

Also: The 25 best early Prime Day deals: AirPods, Dyson vacuums, TVs, phones, more 

The buying guide feature is perhaps the most interesting though. Previously, searching a general term like “work from home supplies” would bring up links to already published online guides. But with this new feature, Microsoft’s AI will compile a list of things a remote worker might use, compare similar products and models, and give details and pricing on those products. This not only gives you insight into things you might not have thought about, but it also lets you easily see how much you can expect to spend and lets you choose between models.

Microsoft says the review summaries and buying guide features are available now in the US, and the price matching feature will be available “soon.”