UAE: How you can use ChatGPT to help you save money
There are hundreds of AI tools available now as artificial intelligence and machine learning take off. But ChatGPT dominates the headlines with its 400 million weekly active users. As a highly capable chatbot, many users are experimenting with it for all sorts of help, both professional and personal. So, how does it stack up when it comes to saving money?
Cheap flights
Saving money when booking flights is topical as many people will be jetting away soon for summer breaks. Plus, we are seeing more social media content about how AI and ChatGPT saved people money when booking flights. I have spoken to many people about these claims and if ChatGPT saved them money on flights, while doing my own research.
The platform has a range of Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs) for booking cheap flights, including Fly GPT, AirTrack GPT and direct access to KAYAK, a popular flight and hotel search engine.
The trick is asking the right questions, or prompts. For example, you could ask it to 'Find me the cheapest flight from Dubai to London in July under $500.' Or 'What's the best time to fly from Dubai to Tokyo for the lowest fares?'
ChatGPT will use well-known flight scanning platforms like KAYAK, Expedia, and Skyscanner to pull together its answers. These sites have also integrated AI into their own search engines along with other popular sites like Google Flights and Hopper. This allows them to offer features like flight alerts and price predictions. ChatGPT's advantage is that it will search across multiple websites, not just one.
Another usefulness of ChatGPT is its ability to explore different hacks and tactics to find the cheapest flight options if your dates and destination airport are flexible. For example, you could ask it 'What days are cheapest to fly to New York?' or 'What airports near Paris are cheaper to fly into?'
The cheapest days to book are often Tuesdays and Wednesdays, while midweek is usually the cheapest days to fly. Another popular prompt is to type: 'Act like a travel agent. I want to go to (destination) in August on a budget. Recommend cheap routes, airlines, dates, and tips.'
Daily budgeting
When it comes to saving money in other areas, ChatGPT says it can help you budget better, asking you upload a bank statement so it can break down your spending and offer advice. I tried this and I was impressed by the results. It listed all my spending into categories (travel, eating out, subscriptions etc) and then gave me some tips on how to save money. For example, I spent money on expensive snacks at the airport and it advised me to buy them cheaper at a supermarket and pack them in my carry-on.
Banking
If you are looking for the best savings accounts available in the UAE, no one site compares all the latest offers in one place. Using ChatGPT is a good starting point as it will give you names of banks that are offering the highest rates if you type the right prompt. But it is just that – a starting point. You still need to go to each bank's website to check the interest rate, see if the offer is still available and read the small print.
Daily deals
ChatGPT did recommend some useful money-saving sites that are popular in the UAE such as The Entertainer, Groupon and Cobone. If you've not heard of Cobone before, it describes itself as the Middle East's biggest 'daily deals', or group buying, site featuring discounts on the best things to do, see, eat and buy in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
I checked out all websites and they did feature a wide range of offers across shopping, staycations, dining and more. ChatGPT also offered me sites like Keepa, which tracks millions of products and prices on Amazon. However, this website won't track prices from Amazon.ae. A better option might be its other recommendation of Honey, a free browser extension by PayPal that automatically searches for discounts and coupon codes during the checkout stage.
Smart shopping
Supermarket and grocery shopping has become more expensive in the UAE but can ChatGPT help you search for the cheapest products among all the different chains here? In the UK, there's a popular app called Trolley, which is a supermarket comparison tool that finds the cheapest grocery prices across 16+ UK supermarkets.
Type in blueberries, for example, and it will tell you which supermarket is selling them at the cheapest price. When asked, ChatGPT said it can give me price comparison tools for UAE supermarkets (e.g., Carrefour vs. Lulu). It recommended Pricena, although this is just for electronics, and Yaoota, which is an Egyptian e-commerce platform. Neither was useful in my quest to save money on my supermarket shop. There is currently no price comparison website for supermarkets in the UAE. Now that's food for thought.
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