Can AI Help You Buy a New Grill? 

Over the last year I have begun to see more people referring to AI queries when it comes to both appliance and grill research. What used to be "Googling" a search is quickly evolving into submitting the query to the various AI agents. 

At this point, that is a mistake. 

The reason is that many people, especially older folks, are taking the AI answer as gospel. 

I have had several people show me AI-generated answers and say "Look, this is what AI has to say about it". 

I've had to explain to them that (at this point), AI is not thinking or critically reasoning. It is synthesising information is it finding when trawling the web. And the information that it is gathering is, in many case, deeply flawed. 

I have made several queries to AI bots relating to products that I sell. I made sure to focus on products that I not only sell in strong numbers, but, that I have a deep understanding of AND that I have used first hand. 

The AI answers, which were generated by grabbing info from manufacturer websites, Reddit, BBQguys (and this blog!) came back with some actionable information, but not enough that an educated consumer could rightly use. 

DCS grill have chronic ignition issues? DCS service is better on the series 9 than the series 7 grills? Napoleon grills have reliability issues? False, false, false. 

This is nonsense and there were more examples that I won't list here. Most of these answers were pulled from places like Reddit, where a single user could have been complaining about the product and the AI bot decided to elevate their answer.  The accurate information was taken directly from the manufacturer web sites and read like a bullet point list of features. Yes, AI did allow you to skip going to a variety of sites to gather info, but is that an advantage when almost half of the information it is bringing back is not accurate or is biased? 

How Should You Use AI Right Now?

My advice to grill shoppers is to use AI to become more efficient, but use it as one data point to make yourself semi-dangerous in terms of product knowledge. Nothing will beat talking to friends or other trusted contacts about their product experiences. You can also go to places like Reddit (which ChatGPT and Google both trawl) and see if you can pick up consistent trends in responses to questions. Do not focus on single comments that are extreme. 

However nothing will replace dealing with a sales professional who:

1 - is trustworthy 

2 - knows product inside and out 

3 - is a great listener

4 - will use AI themselves to become even better sales people 

Can't find someone who meets this criteria? Call more places outside your local area or lean into AI more but still maintaining a the eye of sceptic.  

Using AI: Advice for Sales Professionals

We live in the dawn of AI, and I am sure that it is going to change the way we operate just as the advent of the World Wide Web did in the mid 90's. However, it is not and likely will not be a replacement for dealing with trustworthy sources, whether they are journalists, marketers or retailers. It will be the job of the aforementioned to use AI as a tool to transform into "trust agents", shining light through an abyss of inaccuracies and other noise, thus serving the consumer and ultimately "getting the sale."  I smell opportunity there.