Action for Children is using artificial intelligence (AI) in its Christmas pop-up store to help visitors choose a secret Santa gift for a disadvantaged child. The store is open in Covent Garden, London, until 18 December in the run up to Christmas. It offers shoppers the chance to be a secret Santa for a vulnerable child and buy gifts ranging from a Christmas present, a hot meal or a safe place to sleep. This can be bought by the shoppers or on behalf of someone else and features an artificial intelligence gift predicting machine developed by Capgemini Applied Innovation Exchange. Have you paid a visit to our Secret Santa pop-up store yet?

AI and bots will give donors a massive boost to their understanding and encourage them to donate even more according to the Charities Aid Foundation's think-tank. Almost everyone will have experienced artificial intelligence (AI) on the internet; either when using an automated chatbot linked to a website or via online ads, which use carefully crafted algorithms to target their potential customers. A recent article, entitled Is AI The Future Of Philanthropy Advice, explored the current and future use of AI by charities to help better deliver services and inform potential donors. The promise of being able to extend the reach of charities through more meaningful messaging whilst reducing the cost of delivery by offering automated advice and information, makes AI a very attractive project for charities to pursue. A notable example is Arthritis Research UK, who partnered with Microsoft to pilot an automated chatbot that offered web visitors personalised advice on arthritis.

The idea of an artificial mind that can think by itself has always loomed large in the human imagination – the ancient Greeks told myths of mechanical men. As an academic discipline, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been studied since the 1950s, after computer scientist Alan Turing first asked, "can machines do what we, as thinking entities, do?" But in 2018, AI is firmly out of the realms of science fiction or academic theory. Last week UK prime minister Theresa May stood up in her keynote address to the World Economic Forum and announced her ambition to establish the UK as a "world leader" in AI, alongside plans for its ethical oversight. These days, voice assistants like Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana are in every smart device and computer, and smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are selling in their tens of millions.

Microsoft's Seeing AI app, which helps blind and partially sighted people by narrating the world around them, has been released in the UK. The free program uses artificial intelligence to recognise objects, people and text via a phone or tablet's camera and describes them to the user. Seeing AI, an ongoing research project from Microsoft, is designed to help people with vision impairments complete everyday tasks and offer new levels of independence. According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), more than two million people in the UK live with sight loss, and almost half of blind and partially sighted people feel "moderately" or "completely" cut off from people and things around them. The RNIB estimates that sight loss costs the UK economy more than £4.3 billion in indirect costs, such as unpaid carer costs and reduced employment rates.

The likes of Siri, Cortana and Alexa could help transform the way people give to charity in the future, according to an influential think tank. An article published by Giving Thought, the charity think tank of the Charities Aid Foundation, explores how artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to the development of effective, low-cost philanthropy advice, drive greater amounts of giving and help people to give more effectively. The piece, written by Giving Thought Programme Leader Rhodri Davies, sets out how AI could reduce the cost of philanthropy advice, help people choose how to give, what they want to achieve and identify where need is greatest and which causes might maximise social outcomes and donor satisfaction. It concludes that while artificial intelligence presents many challenges and opportunities for philanthropy, one of the most likely impacts will be to make philanthropy advice a mass market-commodity easily available to the wider public, rather than just the preserve of wealthier philanthropists. Charities have already started to embrace artificial intelligence technology in delivering their mission. Further details of how charities are using AI are set out in this separate piece.