Planning is very important when going to Ikea. Otherwise, it can be very stressful. The GPT Store’s Ikea AI assistant was made to help. It can tell you all about Ikea’s goods and show you how they would look in a room.
Ingka Group owns the most Ikea franchises. In a news release, Francesco Marzoni, the company’s chief data and analytics officer, said that the AI assistant is one of several tests that the company is running “so that we can take part in the AI evolution as we shape our company strategy.”
The Ikea AI Assistant would make the experience less tiring, which is part of Ikea’s pitch to people who might want to use it. I chose to give it a shot. But the Ikea GPT wasn’t a good partner for me when I was designing my home.
It is better on the website
The suggestion I used was “I need storage ideas for my small bedroom or living room.” But the Ikea GPT didn’t give me any ideas. Instead, they told me to read a story on the Ikea US website and even added a picture of a living room just to be safe. I’m not sure if the picture for this question was made by AI or not, but it looks like it came from an Ikea catalog. I tried again and asked for information on bathroom storage. It sent me to the page again.
Once I told the AI assistant to give me a list of trash cans, it finally chose to give me a list of goods instead of a blog post. It only linked to the product pages.
Then I asked what the Kallax shelf would look like in my house. Just so you know, I already have a Kallax that I’m putting together myself. It probably used the built-in DALL-E 3 picture generator on GPT-4 to make an image. This time, the GPT let me know it was making a picture. I asked the same question but gave more specifics: “How about a black Kallax in a studio apartment in the midcentury modern style?” It made two pictures of the thing, and each one had a caption that talked about how it could be used in different ways and for different purposes.
After that, I asked the Ikea GPT if the Brooklyn shop had one model of a nightstand. Before I stopped the conversation, it got stuck in “spinning wheel” mode for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, I went to the Ikea website and found what I needed right away. When I asked the GPT again, it finally told me that the nightstand wasn’t available to be picked up at that address. The website said something different, but this kind of misunderstanding is annoyingly common if you’ve ever worked with Ikea’s stock information that often changes.
It’s easier to browse
Finally, I discovered it was easier to just look at Ikea’s website for ideas. The site has a lot of design ideas for customers. Also, Ikea’s GPT kept telling me to click on site links, which was pointless since I already had an AI helper handy.
The Ikea GPT could help with one problem, though. It’s easy to get lost in Ikea shops. If you have ChatGPT Plus on your phone, you can ask the GPT questions about every item you see in the Ikea Marketplace. That way, you wouldn’t have to look for real people, who are usually busy helping other customers.
Tech is nothing new for Ikea. In the past few years, the big home store has had a lot of smart home goods for sale. It also added a virtual home design tool to its app in 2022. It was called Ikea Kreativ. I have said in the past that I can’t think of a good use for many GPTs, but I wanted to be shown I was wrong. The Ikea GPT isn’t it, though. Thanks, I’ll stick to the books.
At the moment, only ChatGPT Plus users in the United States can use the Ikea AI Assistant. However, Ingka Group plans to make soon it available to people in more places. To find out more about the GPT, The Verge has asked the Ingka Group.
