Technologies

As Black Friday Week Begins, Amazon’s AI Shopping Tool Can Buy for You When Prices Drop

Get ready to find all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Black Friday isn’t just a single shopping day anymore. Amazon calls it Black Friday Week, but it actually runs for almost two weeks: from Thursday, Nov. 20, through Monday, Dec. 1. And this year, Amazon is continuing to incorporate Rufus, its built-in AI shopping assistant. The company says Rufus can track prices, personalize recommendations and automatically buy items when they reach your set target price.

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Rufus is Amazon’s AI assistant

Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, can play a significant role in your shopping experience. You can ask Rufus what’s trending, what fits your set budget or what matches your buying interests. It can surface personalized picks based on your shopping habits, wish lists and browsing patterns.

Rufus can also help you track prices. If there’s an item you’re waiting to buy at a specific discount, Rufus can monitor its price — checking frequently throughout the day — and automatically purchase it once it hits the threshold you’ve set. That means you won’t have to worry about missing lightning deals or losing items in your cart.

Shoppers can also use Rufus for product discovery. The AI assistant can provide tailored gift suggestions or compare products side by side. Because it’s embedded in the Amazon shopping experience, you can ask follow-up questions, refine your preferences or switch categories without having to start over.

How to save more while you shop this Black Friday

You don’t need a spreadsheet and a stopwatch to survive Black Friday, but a little strategy goes a long way. Here’s how to stay smart:

Plan ahead: Start by making a short list of items you genuinely want or need. It’s the easiest way to avoid getting pulled into flashy «half-off» deals that aren’t actually planned purchases.
Create a wish list: Add items early and monitor their pricing throughout the week, as Amazon refreshes deals and inventory daily.
Check membership perks: Prime members receive an extra layer of savings with faster shipping options.
Timing matters: If you’re shopping across categories, keep an eye on rotating daily deals, since some of the steepest discounts only last a few hours.
Set a budget before shopping: Above all, set a firm budget and stick to it. The best Black Friday win is scoring deals without overspending.

Best Black Friday deals this season

Here’s a quick look at some of the discounts Amazon announced:

Amazon devices: Up to 50% off Echo devices, Fire TV devices, Blink security systems and more.
Home and holiday decor: Discounts on artificial Christmas trees, ornaments and seasonal decor.
Grocery deals: Holiday dinner specials, including turkeys and bundled meal savings.
Electronics: Markdowns on products from Bose, JBL, Canon, Acer, Asus and TVs from LG, Hisense and TCL.
Home and kitchen appliances: Up to 55% off Shark appliances, plus discounts on Ninja, Vitamix, Nespresso and Staub.
Fashion and beauty items: Up to 50% off brands like Levi’s, GAP, NAADAM, Theory, AllSaints and premium beauty products.
Books and travel: Up to 80% off Kindle books, print book discounts, and savings on hotels, cruises and car rentals.
Prime Visa and Prime Store card perks: Eligible cardholders can earn extra cash-back rewards during the sale.

Technologies

Your Next Vacation Starts in a Chat: TripAdvisor Debuts App Inside ChatGPT

You can tap AI and TripAdvisor for your travel planning.

You may already use artificial intelligence for planning vacations, but now you can use a new TripAdvisor app inside of ChatGPT to book hotels. The app puts TripAdvisor’s reviews and hotel insights directly into ChatGPT. It’s «a new AI-powered way to experience the best of TripAdvisor,» according to the travel company.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Using the app, trip planners can see top-rated TripAdvisor hotels on an interactive map. They can also read TripAdvisor review summaries, access details about hotels, including images and amenities, and refine results with conversational follow-ups.

Once a would-be traveler selects a hotel, they’ll see available deals from booking sites. When they choose one, they will be redirected to TripAdvisor or one of its partners to complete the booking.

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The new app is available to logged-in ChatGPT users in the US on Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans. You can start using it by opening ChatGPT, navigating to Settings, then Apps & Connectors, and Browse Apps and connect to TripAdvisor. (You should only have to follow these steps once.) Then, and on subsequent visits, simply start your message in ChatGPT with the word TripAdvisor.

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Technologies

Group Chats With ChatGPT Are Rolling Out Globally

OpenAI wants you to collaborate with its chatbot in a group setting.

Last week, OpenAI — always looking for opportunities to put its chatbot into new spaces — introduced Group Chats with ChatGPT baked right in. Based on early feedback, it’s now expanding the feature to all logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans globally over the coming days.

The feature is pitched as a new way to use ChatGPT with other people, especially in collaboration efforts, like planning a big event.

Up to 20 people can be added to a group chat, and messages between individuals don’t count against the rate limit to ChatGPT — only when it responds.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Group chats use ChatGPT-5.1 Auto. OpenAI has also introduced some new implementations of how and when the chatbot responds. It’s been taught new social behaviors for group chats and will apparently follow the flow of the conversation and stay quiet or chime in based on what’s being said.

Adding «ChatGPT» to a message you send will always yield a response from the AI chatbot. You can also provide custom instructions to ChatGPT for the entire chat if you want it to reply in a certain tone or personality, and it can react to messages with emoji.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Group Chats don’t use memory from your existing personal chats, and new memory isn’t created from group conversations, though OpenAI says it’s exploring a way for you to opt in to use existing memory in the future.

If you’re concerned that you’ll be thrown into a dozen chats without your permission, then you’ll likely be happy to hear that you must accept an invitation before you can be added to a group chat with ChatGPT. Additional safeguards are also in place for users under the age of 18, which will reduce sensitive content to all within the group chat.

OpenAI says Group Chats are the beginning of its effort to make ChatGPT more of a shared and collaborative space for people.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 21, #424

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Nov. 21, No. 424.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a fun one. If you know a Gen Z person, you might be familiar with their favorite nonsense phrase, «6-7.» The puzzle editors throw a 6 and a 7 into the puzzle today just to see if we’re paying attention. Do the numbers end up in the same group? I bet you know the answer to that one. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Splish-splash.

Green group hint: Football score.

Blue group hint: Colorado QB.

Purple group hint: Not small.