Holiday shopping is difficult, but IBM thinks its famous supercomputer can help.
The company released a new iOS app Wednesday called Watson Trend that uses Watson's super computing abilities to show which gifts and toys will be the most popular for this year's holidays.
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The iOS app surfaces suggestions in a number of categories, like tech, health and toys and shows products that it thinks will be the most popular in each section. It also aims to predict trends so you can see whether an item will be popular throughout the holidays or if it will be a passing fad.
Behind the scenes, Watson analyzes the conversations around products from social media, blogs, reader comments, product reviews and ratings to determine what will be the most on-demand items. It also takes sentiment (remember Watson's personality identifier tool?) into account to detect exactly why something may be popular.
Though some suggestions are very specific, (PlayStation 4, for instance) others are a lot more vague (Sony cameras, Vizio TVs, Dell desktop computers) so gift-givers may need to do a bit of extra homework to find the exact product.
The app does offer some assistance in the "story behind the trend" section, which explains why it thinks each item or toy will be popular and who on your list may be most likely to want it. It offers a brief summary of what people are saying about the item (there may be a run on Lego toy sets this Christmas, according to the app) and whether a particular item may be more popular among men or women or in a specific area (conversation around the PlayStation 4 is "particularly strong in Maryland and Utah.)
While it may not be able to help you find more personal gifts for the people you care about, it should offer a bit of extra assistance for those especially hard to shop for people in your life.