Secret Santa is a popular way of giving presents at Christmas, but it often results in un-thoughtful and ultimately unwanted gifts. Instead, this year children’s charity Action for Children are giving people the option to give a gift with meaning, by visiting their Secret Santa Pop-Up Store and purchasing a gift in a unique manner, to make a vulnerable child’s Christmas a little brighter.

Action for Children has worked with Capgemini, a consulting, technology services and digital transformation company, to create an exciting, immersive gifting experience - Elf.ai. Designed and created by Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange, Elf.ai uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you find the perfect gift you might want to donate to a vulnerable child this year. To make this possible, elves present you a collection of festive photos and see how you react to them. The elves then work in the background, feeding your emotional responses into the Elf.ai prediction engine, which then suggests a gift it thinks you’d most like to donate; gifts range from a pair of warm winter shoes to a trip to a pantomime show. At the end of the experience, shoppers are transformed into a Secret Santa with a takeaway Instagram filter which they can use to spread the joy of Christmas.

This event is on at: 3 Slingsby Place, London, WC2E