Can AI help you this festive season?
One word: Yes. Two words: Be careful. On Thursday, Time announced its Person of the Year: “The Architects of AI.” It seems “humanity is now flying down the highway, all gas no brakes, toward a highly automated and highly uncertain future.”
Curiously, there was no mention of how AI may ruin the holidays.
Let’s start with one of the season’s biggest burdens: gift giving. We all have people in our lives who are impossible to shop for. What happens every year? You buy Uncle Rick a novelty sweater with a snowman chugging a tallboy and Aunt Penny pretends it’s hilarious even though she immediately plans to drop it off at Goodwill on the drive home.
AI was supposed to turn us into super-shoppers. Instead, it is glitching like Rudolph’s nose. Here are some examples of gift idea fails AI shared with me with no hint of regret:
One person wanted something “for a dad who loves to relax.”
Suggestion: “Chew toys.”
A newlywed wife searching for a unique gift for her husband? “A self-help book about surviving marital breakdown.” Newborn baby? “Cordless power drill.” Yes, you wouldn’t want the baby accidentally strangling itself with a cord while drilling holes into the crib mattress.
I don’t think these LLMs have been trained on human bodily functions.
A romantic gift idea? “A bulk box of adult incontinent diapers.” Gift for a mom who travels a lot? “Portable car urinal.” Gift for a child who loves to play outside? “Litter box.”
And while you’re frantically searching for a luxury gift that does not exist because AI hallucinated and made it up — “The Luminex 500 SmartChef Knife with AI Heating Sensors” — don’t leave your child unattended with the chatbot.
They may ask about Santa.
And they will be told Santa was “invented by Coca-Cola” or is “a fictional character who does not exist.” Mom?!? Is it true Santa is a fake epidermal visage, framed by a voluminous beard, who radiates paternalistic sagacity while his ocular orbs twinkle with an amalgam of jocularity and omniscient surveillance?
Ho, ho, ho — NO, NO, NO!
Can AI inventively personalize your Christmas card this year? Sure. Sometimes it’s magic. Look at your lovely family in the North Pole surrounded by grinning elves! Just double-check the image before licking the envelopes and trekking to Canada Post.
Based on anecdotes now floating around the internet, here’s a checklist as you scrutinize your AI portrait: Does your cat have three eyes? Is your spouse missing a lip? Are there demonic faces reflected in the ornaments? Is the mistletoe a python? Is the eggnog a shade of lava? Is the toboggan emitting contrails? Are your ears upside down?
This hyped tech promising to ease the holiday stress by helping you shop, decorate and entertain also has the capacity to turn the jingle season into a jangle of traumatized kids, wildly inappropriate gifts and accidentally Satanic tchotchkes.
Are you planning to expand your baking repertoire this Christmas? The Star is publishing delightful recipes in our “Cookie Calendar 2025.” That’s not a shameless plug. I’m just ensuring you aren’t hospitalized after AI encourages you to add glue to the gingerbread or actual bark to the peppermint bark.
And AI isn’t just screwing with individuals by encouraging them to put the tree in front of the front door or insisting a wreath must be a fractal loop. It’s also terrorizing towns.
A giant mural was recently erected in London’s Kingston Upon Thames to overlook the restaurants along Riverside Walk. When people gazed at this AI slop they spat out their bangers and mash in horror. Per a description from artnet:
“The disturbing scene appeared to contain large troops of men with misshapen bodies and contorted faces attempting to skate over shallow, foamy waters. Elsewhere, groups filled an infeasibly large wooden boat. Heavily-disfigured dogs bounded about, some appearing to transmogrify into birds. In the background, wooden huts suggestive of a Christmas market were partially engulfed in flames.”
Merry Cthulhu!
As the doomscrolling hyperloop that was 2025 swishes to a close, exhausted souls are hoping AI can serve as a holiday concierge. Just remember: AI doesn’t know joy. It doesn’t feel love. It is optimized to reduce chaos — not make the chaos delightfully memorable.
Christmas is about family and friends, not machines and algorithmic learning.
With that, I leave you for another year. A heartfelt thanks for your ridiculously kind emails and comments in 2025. This is a strange job in a strange time and I feel blessed to be riding shotgun with all of you into our uncertain future.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Three thumbs up.
