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If you have ever stared at a blank search bar trying to remember what people actually like, you are not alone. Giving a thoughtful gift, the kind that feels personal, timely, and just right, is surprisingly hard.
At work, it can be even harder: How do you pick something universally appealing for a team? Or a housewarming present for a Gen Z colleague with totally different taste? Or a $50 dollar gift for someone whose personality is "golf"?
At Goody, we have spent years helping people navigate situations exactly like these. With millions of gifts sent across every imaginable occasion, we have learned something important: choosing a great gift is a deeply human problem, but the process has been too manual for too long.
Today, we are changing that.
We are excited to introduce AI gifting, a new feature that makes finding and sending great gifts dramatically easier.
Meet AI gifting: Your new conversational gifting assistant
Inspired by vibe coding tools and built on Goody's unique dataset of real world gifting behavior, AI Gifting lets anyone start with a simple prompt:
- "Holiday gifts for my team"
- "Something thoughtful for a millennial colleague"
- "$50 gift for someone who loves coffee"
From there, Goody's AI analyzes millions of anonymized gift transactions to surface options that fit the moment and the vibe. It also selects a card and drafts a message so you do not have to fight the cursor blinking on an empty page.
But the real magic happens in the conversation. You can refine, adjust, change the tone, ask for alternatives, or describe your recipient in more detail. The experience feels collaborative, not automated, more like brainstorming with a smart, thoughtful assistant.
“Finding the right item is difficult. Writing the message or choosing a card is often just as challenging,” says Katy Carrigan, CEO of Goody. “Our goal was to use AI to sidestep all that friction, without the end result feeling impersonal or generic.”
A humble approach to a hard problem
Despite the excitement around AI, our team approached this project with realism. Gift giving involves taste, culture, relationships, timing, and emotion, things that cannot be fully solved by algorithms alone.
“AI gifting is a totally new way to use Goody, but it is not magic,” says Mark Bao, Goody’s co-founder and CTO. “We wanted to leverage natural language so people can refine their requests, browse options, and create something that still feels human. The idea is not to enter a few words and hit send.”
That philosophy guided every decision. Goody’s AI invites its users to review and refine the results throughout the entire process of creating a gift.
How it works
AI gifting is designed to remove the burdens that usually slow people down.
- Senders describe the intention behind the gift, for example "wellness gifts for my team."
- Goody's AI identifies strong matches using insights from millions of gifts.
- The AI assistant:
- Suggests curated gift options or creates a flexible pick-your-own gift
- Selects a digital card that matches the tone
- Drafts a message you can use or rewrite using Goody’s recently announced AI-powered message assistant
- Suggests curated gift options or creates a flexible pick-your-own gift
The result is a head start, a thoughtful foundation you can personalize however you like. Senders can refine gift options and messages as much as they want using natural language chat.
In a moment when AI content often raises eyebrows, we knew the output needed to feel unmistakably human.
“There is already so much doubt in the world about what is genuine versus AI-generated,” says Carrigan. “It was important that the end result recipients experience feels like it is coming from a real person.”
What we are seeing so far
AI gifting quietly launched in beta earlier this year, and the response exceeded our expectations. Within days, hundreds of businesses had used it to plan gift campaigns, brainstorm ideas, and simplify complex workflows.
“It was clear right from the jump that our customers love using this,” says Bao. “We have seen it used for every kind of gift occasion you can imagine.”
One surprising insight: people love going ultra specific.
- “Gifts for a remote team that is obsessed with pickleball”
- “Something comforting for a coworker going through a tough time”
- “A quirky gift for an engineer who loves birds”
These highly detailed prompts are where the tool shines. And while there will always be a place for browsing, conversational product discovery is quickly becoming a powerful new way to shop.
Why this matters now
By some estimates, the US corporate gifting market may approach $300 billion dollars in 2025, yet dissatisfaction and outright waste remain shockingly high.
Even the term “corporate gifting” itself conjures ideas of impersonal, generic gifts you’d never receive outside of work – or stilted, copy-paste messages.
“A lot of corporate gifting felt like slop before AI,” observes Bao. “That’s because it’s impersonal. We feel that the holy grail is using AI to deliver personalized, 1:1 gifts and messages, at a scale you could never do on your own.”
This initial release of AI gifting is just the first step on that journey.
“We are clear eyed about where AI works and where it does not,” says Bao. “But we are already seeing moments that feel genuinely magical. We went from being skeptical about AI powered gifting to believing it can be a core part of how people connect.”
Available now
AI gifting launched December 8 and is available on all Goody plans, including the free Starter tier.
We cannot wait to see what you create with it.
Sources:
https://www.giftafeeling.com/pages/corporate_gift_statistics_2025
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